So basically what appears to have happened is that someone went up to Roland Emmerich and said, “You know, I really liked that scene in Independence Day where you blew up the White House, but the rest of the movie was kind of dull – I don’t like my movies to be so slow-paced and thinky!” And then that person gave him 200 million dollars and said, “Roland, make me a movie.” As legend tells it, Roland realized that this would be a task harder than anything he’d ever done, so he gathered about him an intrepid crew of miners and went off to the most isolated area of the Antarctic mountain ranges, and they began to drill – because only in the Antarctic mines can pure, unadulterated preposterone be found. And only with 100% preposterone could he begin making the most preposterous movie of all time.

Whether that legend is true, none who live can say – but we can say that he succeeded in his goal, to make the most over-the-top, ridiculous, blowy-uppy, nonsensical movie ever made. I assume that he retired immediately upon its release, because I don’t see how he could ever top this. Everything about this movie is completely, almost deliberately, as ridiculous as possible. None of the story makes sense. None of the characters make any sense. None of the dialogue makes sense. It contradicts itself seemingly intentionally (it’s fairly ridiculous to imagine that a random American cell phone would work in the Himalayas even as the most horrible disaster in the history of ever has basically destroyed most of the world… but Emmerich’s genius is to make it work after he explicitly put in a line about no ground-based transmissions working).

Every time the movie introduces An Important Moral Lesson, it either immediately changes its mind or makes it so transparently false that a child could see through it. And that’s not even talking about the plot points that only exist for massive blow-uppy potential.

Why did the American President stay behind in DC? So that we could watch it be hit by earthquakes and ash storms (which naturally knocked down the Washington Monument), and then watch a tidal wave smash an aircraft carrier into the White House. Why so much focus on Italy? Let’s just say that the Sistine Chapel holds the key. And when two characters talk about how they’ve been growing apart in a grocery store… well, do you want to guess where an earthquake will make a giant rift?

Plus, this movie tries to answer important scientific questions, such as: How many times can an airplane take off just ahead of the earth crumbling around behind it? How many times can that same airplane shoot out in front of a cloud of ash or flame just in the nick of time? If the rival for John Cusack’s ex-wife’s affections is actually portrayed as a pretty good guy, is it still necessary for him to die?

I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard at a movie in a good long while. 100% recommended.