The effects were terrific. Not too cheesy, not too computerized looking, just pretty spectacular. Tornados trash cultural icons. An incredibly realistic looking tidal wave floods New York. A new ice age kills millions and all the while, Jack (Dennis Quaid) and his band of trusty friends struggle to overcome the odds and rescue his son, Sam (played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a young actor with tons of indie cred), who is trapped in a Manhattan public library. What exactly does Jack think he is going to do when he gets to New York? Your guess is as good as mine. Without much of a plan, he goes off to rescue the son he paid no attention to before the disaster.
Let’s speak of dangling plot points for a while. How do you walk 40 miles in below freezing, unstable weather? What's the deal with Sam’s mom and the kid with cancer? And while we’re asking questions, why did the movie open with the ice cracking in the exact middle of Sam’s little camp, when there were thousands of miles of emptiness all around there? What are the odds of that happening? What are the odds of Sam giving a speech and then within 24 hours, all the events he said might occur over the next hundred years or so suddenly take place? (As soon as everything settles down, I'd pass a law banning that man from ever speaking in public again.) We’re told many times these events are unprecedented yet in the same batch of dialogue, we’re told they happened 10,000 years ago. Which is it? It boggles the mind to believe someone wrote the dialogue for this movie.
A little over half an hour into the movie, my husband leaned over and said, “This is not a comedy.” Apparently I was chuckling a little too loudly. Then bam! quicker than you can say paleoclimatologist, Dash Mihok as Dennis Quaid’s trusty young sidekick – and comic relief – said something that was intentionally meant to be funny. Needless to say I felt vindicated. I knew there was no way the filmmakers could have wanted us to take this movie seriously.
Is “The Day After Tomorrow” a political indictment of the U.S. government’s and the Bush administration’s lack of environmental policies to protect the planet? That’s what has been thrown out there. But I have to say that if this movie was supposed to contain a thoughtful political statement, then I missed the message. To me, the story was so silly, and with the devastation coming so quickly after Quaid’s character’s speech, that any underlying truthfulness to the catastrophic events had no impact, which is fine. I don’t believe movies are required to carry a message. But what I don’t like is the ‘see this movie before it happens to you’ advertising. That just irritates me to no end. It’s a movie, people! It’s a summer blockbuster loaded with CGI and little else. Please don’t try and make it more than it is.
Despite the horrific dialogue, the forgettable characters, and the frozen performances, “The Day After Tomorrow” is rentable. Should you spend $10 at the box office to see it? It depends. If you’re prepared to leave logic at the door, if you’re ready to give yourself over to a few hours of visually stunning special effects, and if you’re able to sit through laughable dialogue, then yes, this is the movie for you.
GRADE: C
"The Day After Tomorrow" was directed by Roland Emmerich and is rated PG-13 for intense situations of peril.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
"The Day After Tomorrow" Photo Gallery
"The Day After Tomorrow" Trailer, Credits and Interviews
