DVD review: 2012

Roland Emmerich's appetite for destruction is keeping the disaster movie going, pretty much single-handed. As if determined to raze every famous building in the world, he ups the ante here with the Earth's crust becoming unstable. Cue massive earthquakes and tsunamis and, as the genre demands, an estranged family that will be reunited by these events. The characters are as cardboard as ever, but the cast is surprisingly good: you don't expect to find John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton in this kind of movie. At a $200m budget, you would expect the spectacular and you often get it. It's a decent thrill ride, though there's nothing as subversive as the Americans trying to emigrate to Mexico in his big freeze movie, The Day After Tomorrow.