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In some cases, when approaching a film, it's not so much a question of 'Is it good?' as it is 'Is it good enough?'. When it comes to high-concept modern genre movies, while it's nice to have a story or a feel or a pace that turns a media spoon-fed product into a movie (it's safe to say that Avatar achieved this), most of the time, we moviegoers just want to have our bases covered. As Peter Travers infamously wrote in his review of Batman Forever, "In the land of fine cuisine, sometimes a Big Mac tastes delicious."

So when it comes to the John-Cusack-runs-and-screams-as-Earth-explodes disaster flick 2012, it very well may be a waste of time to assess its nuances and innate filmmaking value - instead, I just need to grab my popcorn, open a beer, plop on the couch and see if disaster-helmer-supreme Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day) can keep me at least marginally interested for 2+ hours.

The answer is: Kinda. Once Cusack and his kids get the spiel from blissed-out conspiracy theorist Charlie Frost (a loopy Woody Harrelson) that the Earth ain't got much time left and there's one place they can go that's safer than anywhere, it's easy to stay along for the ride, with Emmerich's epic CGI construction outdoing itself literally with every scene. And to have somebody like Cusack in the lead role here makes a kind of odd, emotive sense - I'd call it a casting coup of classic, savvy Hollywood planning. I mean, you can't help but root for the all-grow'd-up Say Anything guy, can you?

But 2012 has an Achilles heel, to be sure, and it's that darned pain in the butt called a 'screenplay'. If only Emmerich would cozy up to Jerry Bruckheimer and get some hints as to what is necessary in a big-budget blow-up script: Bruckheimer has had zillions of successes in not necessarily eschewing silly facets of a story (Armageddon's oil drillers in space), but regarding them as necessary evils and setting it up so the few moments of exposition in his movies are great places for folks to run to the bathroom and back while watching. 2012 tries to be more than 'just a disaster film', and, to be blunt, that dog don't hunt.

Yet even as a brain-dead 'Look, ma! Rio just crumbled to ash!' exercise in mindless entertainment, 2012 simply isn't that much fun. It has great CGI, a fun cast, an interesting setup for a movie like this, but it never breaks through to anything more than cursory entertainment.

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