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Watching L.A. take a beating is always refreshing, and there are some scenes here that are absolutely high art: a lovingly detailed sequence of downtown L.A. wobbling on all sides of a mile-deep fissure in the earth, the skyscrapers dancing around its brink or keeling over in slow faints. A limo scoots around these twisting monoliths trying to get to a comfortable cruising altitude; meanwhile, the unquiet earth rises up on both sides of the escarpment until it's a crescent-shaped motif. Then, concrete advertising sign for Randy's Donuts wheels through the chaos. Being Roland Emmerich, the director must cut away from this splendor to John Cusack, his ex-wife Amanda Peet and his family, and the ex-wife's new squeeze, an expendable plastic surgeon (Thomas McCarthy). The ensemble pulls the appropriate sorrow-and-the-pity reactions to all the destruction we have been giggling at. This is a film of sequences and of wildly uneven tone. Boring family bonding is enlivened with riding around the chaos in ever-larger vehicles: from stretch limo to a private plane to the world's largest fixed-wing aircraft. The film balances out its straight-faced idiocies with conspiracy and rich creeps; the Queen of England, Angela Merkel and the prime minister of Canada are among the plotters. The film soft-pedals the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, except for a Tibetan lama performing the ancient Zen proverb about the too-full cup.
Richard von Busack from Metroactive.com