Slant Magazine November 10, 2009 Roland Emmerich provides the next entry in the "Apocalyptically Disastrous" subgenre of mega-blockbuster cinema, following up Transformers: Re...
Empire Magazine November 13, 2009 Fundamentally terrible, but almost irresistibly entertaining. Its horrors get a tad monotonous in the mid-section, but it’s still a...
It’s easy to mock throwaway blockbusters like 2012, but as enthralling, mindless entertainment, the film is difficult to fault.
thisislondon.co.uk November 13, 2009 2012 may be the biggest disaster movie ever made, an awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural end...
2012, a near three-hour movie built entirely out of special effects set pieces and join-the-dots characterisation.
Movie Retriever November 13, 2009 You don’t get off a rollercoaster and complain about the lack of storytelling.
New Yorker November 16, 2009 2012 is so long, and its special effects are at once so outrageous and so thunderously predictable, that by the time I lurched from the theatr...
RogerEbert.com November 12, 2009 This is fun. 2012 delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for...
ReelViews November 12, 2009 If, as is believed in certain fringe circles, the world will come to an end in 2012, at least there will be no more movies like this one made.
Independent November 13, 2009 In between the explosions and quakes you sometimes hear snatches of the script, and then wish you hadn’t.
Village Voice November 10, 2009 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...
detnews.com November 13, 2009 This is fear-mongering, sentimental, horror show shtick, but it’s also fairly competent, making 2012 a work of awful efficiency
tnr.com November 13, 2009 [J]ust as the cyclones and tsunamis of The Day After Tomorrow ultimately succumbed to a bad case of narrative frostbite, 2012's ludicrous thri...
USA Today November 13, 2009 The movie is an undeniable visual spectacle, but just as unequivocally a cheesy, ridiculous story.
Arizona Republic November 12, 2009 It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel…like I have a headache.
New Yorker November 16, 2009 2012 is so long, and its special effects are at once so outrageous and so thunderously predictable, that by the time I lurched from the theatr...
Preposterous? You bet. But 2012 delivers the disaster-movie goods better than any other popcorn movie we’ve seen since the '80s.
Observer December 7, 2009 2012 is reminiscent of yesteryear '80s shlock-tastic blockbusters – total popcorn entertainment with ridiculous dialogue and impossible s...
CinemaBlend November 12, 2009 A soothing bath of Hollywood tropes and cliches.
Christianity Today November 13, 2009 If 2012 is an apotheosis of all disaster movies, that means it’s also an apotheosis of all disaster-movie clichés.
Daily Telegraph November 13, 2009 Emmerich’s vision of global huddling and new-dawn optimism has a harebrained naivety you almost want to treasure, but that’s this...
Boston.com November 12, 2009 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...
Rolling Stone November 12, 2009 Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching Transformers 2 for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-drai...
News of the World November 13, 2009 Disaster movies can’t get any bigger than this (until Emmerich makes a film about Earth crashing into Mars or something). But it’s fair...
Newark Star-Ledger November 12, 2009 Actors say silly lines with deadly seriousness. Exposition is wielded like a sledgehammer. All you can do is grit your teeth and wait for the...
MSN Movies November 12, 2009 (Many) will decry "2012" as a plotless, illogical, clichéd, demented popcorn flick (because it is), but this is that rare case where the apoca...
Toronto Star November 12, 2009 Perhaps writer-director Roland Emmerich was hoping for a so-bad-it’s-good cult status with his latest disaster flick.
I found myself reaching for a phantom video-game controller to help Our Heroes and Heroine defy certain death.
2012 is the rare case of a bad film that I’m nevertheless obliged to recommend you see.
People talk about "formula" almost always as a pejorative, but formulas get to be formulas because they work, and there’s something to b...
Globe and Mail November 13, 2009 As always in Emmerich’s rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper.
Austin Chronicle November 12, 2009 Thrilling, ridiculous (the script, by Emmerich and longtime co-writer Harald Kloser, is riddled with howlingly goofy lines and seriously improbable...
Los Angeles Times November 13, 2009 [Nothing] will give you more respect for how difficult it is to be an actor than watching top talent like John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Pee...
New York Post November 13, 2009 Only a movie critic without a sense of humor would question whether you could really drive a limo straight through a collapsing skyscraper…or wheth...
Washington Post November 13, 2009 The crowning achievement in Emmerich’s long, profitable career as a destroyer of worlds.