2012 (Cert 12A, 157 mins)
Stars: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Tom McCarthy, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Liam James, Morgan Lily, Woody Harrelson
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Rating: 4/5

CANCEL the London Summer Olympic Games! Our time on the third rock from the sun will come to a dramatic end on December 21, 2012, when planets align as decreed by the Mayan calendar.

Thus no-one is going to care a jot about whether our stadia are finished on time, or which member of the cycling team breaks an individual pursuit world record.

Let’s call the whole thing off, stop pouring countless billions into the event and instead channel all of that money into endless parties.

If the end of days is truly upon us, we may as well go out with a bang.

And that’s certainly what director Roland Emmerich does in his gloriously overblown and knowingly trashy disaster epic.

Having previously destroyed all the major cities during an alien invasion (Independence Day) and plunged the globe back into the Ice Age (The Day After Tomorrow),he goes one better in 2012 by attempting to wipe out the entire human race.

Every nickel and dime of the reported $260m (£155m) budget is up there on the screen as he wreaks carnage on a jaw-dropping, logic-defying, grand scale.

It’s unabashedly silly, yet exhilarating, as Emmerich unleashes follows one dazzling special-effects sequence with another, upping the ante as he gleefully references all of the disaster movie cliches.

Limousine driver Jackson Curtis (Cusack) is one of the heroes of the hour, joining estranged wife Kate (Peet), her new boyfriend Gordon (McCarthy) and the children Noah (James) and Lilly (Lily) as they flee the US West Coast.