“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.” So wrote T. S. Eliot.

Well, that’s nice and poetic, but director Roland Emmerich would say, “Not so fast, T. S.!”

Emmerich has the most recent handle on “The sky is falling, it’s the end of the world!” films such as “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and now, the mother (so far) of all cinematic cataclysms, “2012.” This CGI extravaganza already has grossed close to $300 million worldwide.

The plot of “2012” is loosely based on the belief of some people that the ancient Mayan calendar predicted the world would end on Dec. 21, 2012.

But you won’t get a lot of Mayan history in Emmerich’s movie. That’s only one of the explanations given in the film as to why the earth is having a really bad day. Plenty of science and pseudo-science is lobbed. (But we’re sitting there saying, “Blah, blah, blah, who cares why St. Peter’s Dome collapses, let’s just get our 10 bucks worth and see it!”)

The film is also politically correct, depending on where you sit on the aisle. Even in this make-believe world’s end, the president, though not named Barack Obama, is still an African-American. And when the United States needs a Noah’s Ark type of thing, we call on the Chinese to build it, natch. There’s also an Indian family in peril. It’s a multicultural apocalypse, leaning slightly to the left.

Much like “The Day After Tomorrow” or “Armageddon,” this a fabulously good, bad, good time. It is predictable, obvious, loaded with every disaster-movie cliche you can imagine, including conspiracy theories and the wealthy stepping over the poor, trying to escape any way they can. That one goes all the way back to 1951’s “When Worlds Collide”—the rich wheelchair-bound villain builds a spaceship to avoid the meteor hurtling toward earth. I have a sense, however, that Emmerich was toying with a general denunciation of capitalism.

There’s even, yes, a cute dog.

Look, if you want originality, go Off-Broadway. I loved every not-surprising moment of “2012.”

The story—the part that involves the humans, not the rising seas or collapsing mountains—is silly, with people saying goodbye constantly and at length. Whatever happened to, “Gotta go, it’s been swell, the earth is opening up under my feet!”

John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and a few others are given eye-rolling words to speak. They do OK, and don’t bump into the special effects. Anybody who goes to a movie of this genre and expects to find a great script and sensitive acting—well, perhaps the world has come to an end and you just don’t know it yet!

For those who are not too picky, “2012” has a little something for everyone; director Emmerich’s plot vignettes, in between the floods and erupting volcanoes, attempt to cover all bases for all audiences.

Sure, you’ll snicker at the totally unrealistic escapes that the plucky Cusack and family make from a world imploding and exploding, but that’s why it’s a movie, and not real life. He drives a car right through a super-massive earthquake, and is awfully limber for a writer of failed sci-finovels. (However, Cusack’s well-known slack-mouthed expression, while irritating in other roles, works perfectly here.)

This is no gritty walk on the somber side of human survival, it’s a slaphappy theme park of destruction, the ultimate example of the vicarious thrill we get out of watching our world ravaged on the big screen. So, needless to say, the computer-generated wipeout of Earth is very impressive. I think my favorite was the Himalayas going underwater. But it’s hard to choose.