2012
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: November 13, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
14
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
There's something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection. In 2012, Emmerich gives you everything you expect, but gives it to you bigger. Read full review
100
Washington PostDan Kois
2012 takes the disaster movie -- once content simply to threaten the Earth with a comet, or blow up the White House -- to its natural conclusion, the literal end of the world. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
The visual effects are pretty sensational, delivering the cutting-edge CGI goods auds want and expect. It will be hard to watch "Earthquake'' ever again after this one. Read full review
80
SlateDana Stevens
2012 isn't a bad movie that, out of sheer boredom, you might snicker at once or twice; it's a two-and-a-half hour laugh riot that plays on our expectations of the genre by anticipating and exceeding them. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
God forgive me, but I enjoyed the nerve-racking silliness of this newest, loudest exercise in destruction. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
For visual noise by the ton, Emmerich is my kind of hack, the pluperfect blend of leaden self-seriousness and accidental-on-purpose self-satirist. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
As you might suspect, the 2012 dialogue is pure Velveeta. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
For all of its faults, ends up being relentlessly watchable as well, a summertime popcorn spectacle plopped down in the middle of the fall movie season. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterStephen Farber
Eye-popping special effects ensure that this movie will be a smash hit, and while it's entertaining for most of its excessive running time, the cheesy script fails to live up to the grandeur of the physical production. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderCliff Doerksen
Spectacular CGI disasters. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
Any sentient viewer will be able to predict every lumpy twist of this ludicrous, fitfully enjoyable movie. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
This long, ludicrous soap opera is also a mighty spectacle, a new standard in disengaged destruction. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
This film that imagines the end of the world not as a whimper but as an implosion is a preposterously diverting, instantly forgettable, big-screen video game. Read full review
50
Village VoiceChuck Wilson
The two-hour-and-40-minute 2012 is overstuffed with special-effects, but the Curtis clan's mad dash out of town is the closest the movie gets to actually being fun. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The last 40 minutes test your patience -- and intelligence -- in a way the rest of this big, dumb, crazy movie never does: Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The result is a state-of-the-art multiplex three-ring circus whose special effects stagger the senses and play like a video game, whose human drama aims for the cosmic and lands waist-deep in the Big Silly. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
As far as the new disaster film 2012 is concerned, the world will end with both a bang and a whimper, the bang of undeniably impressive special effects and the whimper of inept writing and characterization. You pays your money, you takes your chances. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Although 2012 is what they call "critic-proof," it's not immune to analysis. It depicts a world where no one, man or God, has much say in what happens to the planet, and where the survival of one family outweighs the deaths of billions. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
2012 is totally, certifiably nuts, without being quite as off-the-wall kitschy as Emmerich's last special-effects extravabanzoo, "10,000 BC." Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The movie is an undeniable visual spectacle, but just as unequivocally a cheesy, ridiculous story. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Doomsday views are a knockout, but the script is a real disaster. Read full review
50
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
If characters with more than one dimension, a plausible story and some sort of viewpoint are moviegoing musts, you may leave 2012 feeling a tad shortchanged. Read full review
45
NPRBob Mondello
Say this for Roland Emmerich's latest movie: It IS a disaster. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
It occurred to me that Emmerich and Co. might be playing this whole thing for laughs. It probably occurred to them, too. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Where else are you going to get a chance to see the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy drift down the side of a mile-high tsunami and take out the White House? Big. Dumb. Fun. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Despite the frenetic action scenes, the movie sags, done in by multiple story lines that undercut one another and by the heaviness of its conceit. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
The set pieces are grand—gloriously dumb and never realistic enough to make you wince at the fact that billions of microscopic souls are dying before your eyes. Rather, you wince at everything else. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Perhaps the strangest thing about 2012 is that the bad parts of the film are among the most enjoyable, because they're so over-the-top ridiculous that it's impossible not to break out laughing. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Operates in a dead zone roughly equidistant between parody and idiocy. You do get the connection between tongue and cheek, but much of the humor still goes thud. Read full review
30
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Emmerich’s main achievement is to take a bunch of excellent actors, including Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson, and to prevent all of them--with the exception of Oliver Platt and a pair of giraffes--from giving a decent performance. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
2012 is ultimately only about finding new ways to topple monoliths. Only they don’t feel that new. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching "Transformers 2" for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper. Of course, that's just part of disaster's simple recipe: Blow us up, then blow us off. Read full review
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