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Four stars****

Sometimes you go to the cinema for entertainment and other times to be educated or at least to be made to think out the options and results from what you’ve seen. This movie goes for the former and doesn’t leave any room for debate or constructive criticism over whether the world will, in fact, end in 2012 as some would have us believe.

The writers obviously threw every natural disaster they could muster on to the drawing board for this screenplay and decided to keep them all; hence the almost three hour show. Why cut anything when you could keep the people in their seats for the longest time?

Screenplay writers have to put together a movie that we believe in. We don’t have to actually have experienced a situation to believe in it (like having actually been part of a train crash) to understand, to a certain extent, what it must actually be like to have experienced the situation. We believe in James Bond movies because we get to consider how we would have reacted under the same circumstances that Bond finds himself in. Even in circumstances we must know in our minds are not possible or too much of a coincidence, the screenplay writer can lead us into a trance of accepting as true, exactly what we see. In 2012 people suddenly manage to gain the capacity to hold their breath under water for periods of time that must exceed anyone in the world book of records, while they’re working very hard on moving metal ropes; a job that would cause great grief above the water line where you could breathe normally. Nevertheless we accept the situation and believe in them.

Director Roland Emmerich and fellow writer Harald Kloser have come up with a screenplay that’s almost 100% believable, apart from a few real ‘silly’ moments that makes the movie script flow. That’s what makes this such great entertainment. We can all step out of the ‘real logic’ view and accept the movie for what it is; a movie – not real life.

It will make a good return on its investment as word of mouth will let others know what great fun it is and, more importantly, what great digital effects we are able to witness. I don’t know how much of the movie is real and how much is CGI, but the latter provides us with scenes beyond what have been observed before. That’s why it scores so high on the entertainment list. You can see where and why they spent the $260 million and feel your ticket price is worth its value.

The writers have managed to make sure the bad guys meet their maker while ensuring the good guys get through the battle. The pay offs shown early in the film get their pay back later on. From a screenplay writer’s point of view; this movie works.