**

I’m not looking forward to the end of the world any more than the next guy, but I did briefly consider ending it all at least once or twice while watching director Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster-epic, the bloated and boisterous “2012,” a motion picture that at best is little more than commercial kitsch.

Much of the film’s action is simply vulgar death and destruction as seen at a distance, the filmmakers intent on capturing a PG-13 rating because—let’s face it—that’s where the big blockbuster dollars are to be mined. But even that MPAA rating is a rouse confirming the folly of the current ratings system while betraying any sense of authenticity in relation to the events depicted in the film.

Since those events have nothing attached to them, no significance other than as kindling for the apocalyptic fires that begin to burn after the film’s first half-hour and continue unabated for nearly two hours longer, the whole thing feels like a set-up for car crashes at an Indy 500 race without benefit of the race itself.

At least in films like Alex Proyas’ “Knowing” there was a context to the coming end of the world, which whether or not you accepted gave it a certain weight, a kind of justification. But “2012” is just an excuse to blow things up; a steady stream of set-pieces that begin with stationary establishing shots to inform the audience of time and place before everything on screen is laid waste.

After a few of these wholesale catastrophes, it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the Vatican or the White House or downtown Los Angeles—everything blends together, robbing the scenes of any real distinction. What it amounts to, then, is the equivalent of a young child constructing elaborate Lego concoctions simply so they can be smashed and torn down for mommy and daddy’s supposed amusement.

Worse than that is the fact that “2012” is positively bursting with cartoon exploits—a Winnebago driven by divorced dad John Cusack leaps over buckling roads in ways that recall Evil Knievil; a novice pilot swoops and careens through exploding buildings and toppling skyscrapers with little more than a scratch. Not only are such impossible escapes enacted, they occur with regularity, Emmerich seemingly content to essentially re-stage the same scene over and over again.

Even the controversial interpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar, which portends the Earth’s end in the year 2012, is barely up for discussion. Instead, the sun is emitting neutrinos that are causing the planet’s surface to shift, and with that fact established, reason is placed neatly in a drawer and the more ethereal subjects never revisited.

The acting, plot components and structure are perfunctory, unoriginal in every way; only the special effects occasionally impress. But it’s little consolation for the film's countless other failures, making “2012” the weakest work the director has ever done; a crowded mishmash of bodies falling, children screaming, tired clichés, product placements and poorly-timed jokes that aren’t even funny.

#