There was a time not all that long ago that apocalyptic films were all the rage. It seemed like there were several big-budget versions of exactly the same premise coming out every year. You may recall when Deep Impact and Armageddon came out in the same year and were essentially exactly the same movie. The only real difference was the Armageddon focused an awful lot on a love story whereas Deep Impact was somewhat focused on an unrealistic teenage romance.
I thought both of those films were pretty decent but then just like Hollywood always does, they went too far with it and kept beating the horse after it was long dead.
It's been a while since a film of this sort was made and I was kind of surprised to find out that Gerard Butler signed on for this. I guess he chases a paycheck just like anyone else.
Before I get too judgmental I suppose I should go ahead and admit that there isn't really a whole lot that I can think of in how a film about the "end of the world" could not borrow aspects from films with similar themes. There's only so many plot lines that something like this could follow.
At least in this one they kind of get straight to the action and don't spend a ton of time building up and wasting time with filler. Basically, we are told at the start that a comet is going to pass very closely by earth and at first people are excited about it because it is going to be lovely or something. As you can expect the scientists were horribly wrong and their predictions that tiny parts of it were going to burn up in the atmosphere was way off and one of the first bits that hit the earth completely destroys a large part of Florida.
[src](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/CO53RTJUC5APLHCZPFLQPBC6XU.png)As you would imagine, global panic sets in and things start to get chaotic. John Garrity (Butler) receives a text with details on how he has been selected to go to a survival bunker along with his family members but the bad thing about this is that none of his friends or other family have been selected. Word travels quickly where the pickup points are and soon the masses of unselected people swarm these areas and cause more chaos. I suppose it is somewhat interesting but a big problem that I have with this portion of the film is that we are time and time again subjected to what I consider to be very lazy storytelling in that the tension is created for Garrity's family because they keep encountering traffic jam after traffic jam.
Eventually and predictably they miss their flight because of the masses of people not selected that are mucking things up for the people that do have permission to go to the bunkers. In one particularly tragic moment when the people are shouting at the military about the fact that they are giving all the people a death sentence a higher ranking soldier points out to the masses that 99% of the military were not selected either.
So I'll go ahead and spoil the ending but you shouldn't be upset with me because this is a Hollywood film and this much would be obvious anyway: The family makes it to the bunker in the nick of time - just like every other film that has ever been made like this.
Should I watch it?
For fans of these sorts of film I suppose this could be considered passable as mindless entertainment. The acting is pretty solid on the part of all involved including the child actor and newcomer Roger Floyd. This is always a surprise to me when this happens because I never expect much from child actors and generally find that they are mostly pretty bad.
Literally nothing original happens in this film and it is just a sequence of frustrating events that keep the Garrity family from reaching the place they need to be... over and over. I will admit that I skipped large portions of the film probably starting at the 14th traffic jam they encounter. It might be ok to have on in the background and I guess I can appreciate the fact that they made the impact sequences look pretty realistic considering the rather small budget of $35 million.
This one could go either way but it certainly isn't going to be winning any awards. I will likely look forward to the planned sequel about what the world is like with 99% of the population wiped out but I don't think you would need to actually have watched this film in order to understand the eventual part 2.
