Roland Emmerich, who bought us Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow stretches the disaster movie envelope with 2012 to bring us the disaster movie to end all disaster movies.

Built around the rather wobbly premise that because one itty-bitty millenia-long calendar carved into a remote Mayan temple stops on Dec 21, 2012, the world is going to end on that day, 2012 shows us the end of the world mostly through the eyes of not-very-successful author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), who stumbles across the truth a heartbeat ahead of everyone else and then sets out to save his kids, his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), her boyfriend, his boss, his boss's kids, his boss's girlfriend, his boss's girlfriend's boyfriend and, naturally, a dog.

Leading the predictions of doom is Dr Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whose job it is to advise the President (Danny Glover) and fend off the evil plans of Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), the Whitehouse Chief of Staff who manages to wheedle his way into power when the noble president decides to go down with his ship... ie, the US of A.

Emmerich doesn't miss a cliché in this film. Or a disaster. By heating the Earth's core with solar radiation, "the likes of which has never happened before", the Earth's crust starts to move, dropping California into the ocean and conveniently moving China closer to the US, saving our doughty refugees from oblivion in the nick of time. Can't have our heroes dying halfway through the film, after all, even if, you know, that would be the only logical outcome at that point...

But our are on a mission, you see, to find the secret government project responsible for building huge arks set up to save the world's artworks and anybody who can afford the one billion Euro per seat price tag.

One of the Curtis kids is even named Noah, I kid you not.

We have earthquakes. The super volcano in Yellowstone National Park goes off. Tidal waves break over the Himalayas. The San Andreas Fault, well, falters... Every major religious landmark is destroyed, except the Islamic ones, because the producers didn't want to risk a fatwah. They even manage to get a nod to the Posiedon Adventure in there for a moment or two.

And yet our heroes, who should arguably by now be suffering the worst case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ever recorded, manage to fly through pyroclastic clouds, survive plane crashes, near drownings and the death of six billion people, give or take, and end up with a cheery smile and the hope for a brighter future in Africa, where apparently nothing much happened. No word at the end of the film about what the Africans might think of that plan.

This is guilty-pleasure popcorn cinema at its finest and I thoroughly enjoyed every absurd moment of it. The acting is fine, insofar as all the actors manager to deliver their lines convincingly, and without cracking up, even Danny Glover when he gives the obligatory Presidential address to the nation, and Chiwetel Ejiofor when he's trying to save a bunch of refugees with a speech so cheesily noble one's cholesterol count will probably increase just by watching him deliver it,

The special effects in this film are awesome and if you're a closet fan of classics like The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Volcano, or any of Emmerich's other attempts to destroy planet Earth, you're in for a treat. If not, stay at home. You will think it is silly.