2012, the film, is based on "bad science", an inaccurate premise, and a silly script. Moreover, the subplot dialogue, between the protagonist and his ex-wife, as well as their children and her new husband, has the white-whine whinny of a forty-something quiche eater in a mall-gym confession. The subplot reminds you of Californication, that other disaster movie, literally and figuratively, but without the pornography or the depression bound hero, or the interest for that matter.
In 2012, the hero lives in Santa Monica, as opposed to Venice Beach, and lives in his head but after a few days on the edge of extinction, he finds his humanity. He also gets his wife back, his children, and the word family is preserved, we can see how suburbia will be emerge from the swamp of Namibia. But perhaps the film is worth seeing if you haven't thought about the idea of mass extinction lately.
There's a moment late in the film when the great flood has returned and an Indian couple is looking up at a monstrous tsunami, the heighth of several skyscrapers, and here they are, about to wash them away, and the multitude with them, like ants down the drain.
It's a stunning realization of the old disaster theme but perhaps a foreshadowing after all.  Because sooner or later there will be a meteorite, no bigger than a tennis court or half a tennis court, that will remind us of real calamities,  not hunger in Ethiopia, not war in Waziristan.  We have the lost any sense of real extermination, or fear from something beyond us, and yet we are thrilled by the possibility.