SHOULD THE WORLD kick it come 2012, let's hope it goes out in the crazy, grandiose fashion director Roland Emmerich imagines.

The apocalypse would be a bit of a bummer, but in Emmerich's vision you'll be too busy to care about anything profound or remotely logical. Billions would die and slabs of SoCal would cleave off into the Pacific while quakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions would send humanity scurrying about as if caught in a video game.

As choreographed by the director of "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow," Earth's death knell actually would come off as a whole lot more chipper than all those Debbie Downer doomsday prophecies.

This special-effects extravaganza

spends little time with moral introspection like that. When it does try to dig deeper, by raising class and immigrant issues, it turns unintentionally hilarious. The laughs could have resulted in a catastrophe of colossal proportions were this a serious-minded film, but "2012" is so goofy that laughing with it, and at it, is part of its charm.

As for the film's raison d'être — the Mayan calendar prediction that a cataclysmic event will occur in 2012 — only lip service is paid to it; a mere setup for the buckle-your-seats chaos that ensues. "2012" excels as a big-budget behemoth designed solely to thrill and entertain, and boy does it ever accomplish that — with style and brass.

Even with its amazing CGI-effect

set pieces — a twin-engine plane struggling to outrace projectile lava in Yellowstone Park and a car dodging toppling skyscrapers and buckling freeways in the Los Angeles area — "2012" takes it cues from the old-school disaster film textbook.

Emmerich and co-screenwriter Harald Kloser stitch together the choicest elements from late '70s and early '80s disaster movies — "Earthquake," "The Poseidon Adventure" (not the terrible remake) and "Tidal Wave." They even tip their hat to more contemporary fare such as "Armageddon" and "Titanic."

The best disaster films, and "2012" is in that league, succeed not just because of amazing special effects, goofy dialogue and perilous situations. Cast members, although mere pawns for the action, play a major role and must leave larger-than-life impressions. Who could forget the tragic/hilarious sight of dear Shelley Winters taking that fateful plunge, and showing us a flash of her knickers, in "Poseidon"?

"2012" finds its Winters in Woody Harrelson. (He keeps his knickers mostly on). Too bad Emmerich dispatches his crackpot, pickle-chomping conspiracy theorist Charlie Frost early. Fortunately, we're left rooting for a team of appealing actors, including John Cusack as luckless novelist and family man Jackson Curtis, who turns into a kind of unlikely prophet; Chiwetel Ejiofor, as government scientist Adrian Helmsley, who alerts world leaders about the Earth's crust getting cooked; and Oliver Platt as shrewd politician Carl Anheuser, who shows his true colors later on. Danny Glover as the befuddled president and Thandie Newton as his do-gooder daughter are all but wasted. Ejiofor gives us the most complex performance, eking out genuine emotion despite the rampant silliness around him.

"2012" doesn't belong to them but to Emmerich. The director has had his share of dogs, especially the lame "10,000 B.C." and the stultifying "Godzilla." Here, he asks for no forgiveness and goes all commando on ending the world, setting the anarchy in polar opposites such as Vegas and Tibet.

Sound idiotic? Preposterous? You bet. But "2012" delivers the disaster-movie goods better than any other popcorn movie we've seen since the '80s.