The comparisons, of course, are inevitable. Roland Emmerich directed “Independence Day,” one of sci-fi’s best guilty little pleasures, 15 years ago. Humanity survived that one by the skin of its teeth. The director’s “The Day After Tomorrow” came a decade later and, once again, we jumped into our thermal undies and made it by the skin of our teeth.

Now the world’s most ominous year since the cataclysmic Y2K looms darkly on the horizon, giving Emmerich one more chance to hang humanity in the balance. It seems the ancient Mayan’s were right: The precise alignment of the planets in the year “2012” will wreak havoc on our fragile planet (never mind the Styrofoam) and not many will live to see 2013.

I suspect that only a few castaways and agoraphobics (no, that’s not the fear of living in Agoura) have yet to see the trailers for Emmerich’s latest affront to planet Earth. The Eastern Seaboard upchucks into the Atlantic. The West Coast literally falls off the map. Hawaii erupts. The Himalayas drown.

Yet we’re already 30 minutes into the movie before the nifty visual destruction begins, and for that first half-hour we’re introduced to a rather sullen and uninteresting bunch of folks.

In “Independence Day,” a quartet of oddly endearing characters (Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid) kept us moderately entertained while the aliens crept up to terminate us. In “2012,” even the usually likable John Cusack seems vacuous and uninteresting. The others are no more riveting . . . and, dagnabit, there are kids!

Maybe it’s just me, but kids and disaster movies just don’t mix. In Stephen Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” (2005) parental angst kept getting in the way of the action, and it’s happening again in “2012.”

When the rumbling starts, “2012” does take off, and for another half an hour I’ll admit the CG devastation is pretty sweet. Buildings fall. Earthquakes swallow entire neighborhoods. Yet Cusack and friends have a maddening way of staying mere inches away from the devastation in a fortuitous series of coincidences that tend to induce a disbelieving numbness.

Yes, I believe in Hobbits. I believe a binary virus can bring down an entire race of aliens. But do I believe one can sidestep an entire state falling into the sea? Heck, that lucky and, even as the world crumbled around me, I’d stop off and buy a Lotto ticket. (And let’s face it: Without mirth, global devastation is just . . . well, a bummer.)

“2012” eventually settles down as a ho-hum survival film and gets rather inconsequential again as “those who will” and “those who won’t” play by the numbers. One can pretty much determine, midway through the ruckus, who will survive and who won’t.

So, yeah, “2012” is more or less a rehash of “Independence Day” without the flying saucers or witty dialogue or the clever nuance to keep us smiling through the turmoil. In Hollywood, even formulaic success eventually gets old.

What a ridiculously delightful flick about those increasingly mythical, carefree ’60s! It seems back in 1966, during the heyday of Britain’s musical revolution, England’s stuffy old aristocracy prevented the BBC from playing any rock ’n’ roll. Bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who—in fact, all of today’s catalog of early British classics— never made it to the airwaves.

Well, no country is an island. To rectify the situation, intrepid entrepreneurs set up floating radio stations in the North Sea, transmitting just out of range of British jurisdiction. Wild, rebellious and uncensored, these floating jukeboxes became increasingly popular in England, despite the government’s attempts to shut them off.

“Pirate Radio” portrays one such station, a rusting, floating hulk named Radio Rock (based loosely on the real Radio Caroline). Aboard Radio Rock, the usual cast of spacey comedic characters spend their days and nights spinning wax, drinking toddies and contemplating women.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans and Bill Nighy are such renegades of rock, giving the masses what they want. And that’s pretty much the gist of “Pirate Radio.” There’s no real tension here (other than a wonderfully stuffy Kenneth Branagh trying to shut down the station), but this one’s really not meant to be any more than a musical blast from the past, a mosaic of personalities and principles that blend together as seamlessly as side two of Abbey Road. And that’s good enough for me.

A fan of the ’60s? This one and “Taking Woodstock” make wonderful cinematic bookends for the era.