The Day After Tomorrow | Review

Man versus nature marathon continues the current trend of great eye candy and knucklehead stupidity.

Snow storms in New Delhi? Hailstorms with pellets the size of footballs in Tokyo? The Hollywood sign ripped apart? While it’s certainly interesting to see what studios can do with cgi and special effects these days, it doesn’t help matters that these same productions offer cool visuals and rummage about with the most mind-numbing narratives possible. Making it three for four in the mega productions to hit and miss this May is 20th Century Fox’s disastrous disaster epic.

Rather than unfriendly green things from outer space or big stomping creatures, director Roland Emmerich’s newest holocaust is due to the greenhouse effect, a.k.a global warming. The Day After Tomorrow sees downtown New York turn into a temporary surfer’s paradise and then winter wonderland with an end result that sends plenty of proud Americans hiding for cover just over the fence of the nearest Mexican border. Arguing over data findings and off-the chart readings, Dennis Quaid (Far From Heaven) shows that he doesn’t have much time for confused U.S presidents. The brave father breaks away from bureaucracy and leaps into his Norwegian cross-country skiing super skills with hopes of saving the relationship with his grown college boy Jake Gyllenhaal (Lovely and Amazing) who happens to be capsized at the New York library with a bunch of book-burning folks. With libraries being a prime place for some lip-lock, it comes to no surprise that after several heroic duties that the film’s surviving characters what to forget their possible outcome seeming completely oblivious to the massive amount of lives lost.

Climatologists and Boston Red Sox fans aren’t the only crowd who’ll enjoy this flick, Emmerich hits the bull’s-eye is in the big special effects domain; his forte for massive distraction gives anyone seeing this film something to look forward to in-between each and every god-awful scene of character dialogue. The flooded shots (filmed in Montreal) featured at the front steps of the NYC public library look especially cool, much of the film’s major credit goes to the art production and special effect teams. While this is a slight nudge better than ID4, don’t look for any intelligent plot or logical dramatic acting; this extreme global catastrophe allows for more eye-rolling and laughable moments than necessary. More disappointing is the complete lack of use of two talents, Quaid and especially Gyllenhaal hardly make their presence known.

If all the scenes of mass destruction were somehow sequentially spliced together then I’d say that The Day After Tomorrow is a great 25-minute History channeltype of documentary on a scientist’s preposterous opinion about the end of the world. Unfortunately, too many brainless bits seem to damper the film, making it a less enjoyable rollercoaster ride.

Rating 1.5 stars