The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Reviews

• Clichéd, illogical, unscientific but the first hour really delivers even if the second hour is like the 1970's never happened

  bob the moo2004-05-31

  After years of warning about global warning, Jack Hall is horrified to find all his predictions coming true much faster than he could have imagined. Hail stones the size of footballs decimate cities, typhoons destroy Los Angeles and New York becomes flooded. As the big freeze crosses the northern hemisphere, a small group of survivors try to fend off the cold as the world prepares for a dramatic change in the world order. This film may be a modern blockbuster but in almost everyway it is a 1970's disaster movie where an event happens after some build up and we then spend the rest of the film watching the survivors trying to, well, survive. In that regard the film carries all the usual problems that the genre carries but happily benefits from the fact that the effects are much better than 1970's movies could manage. For this reason the first hour is great – it has dramatic pace, is involving and looks fantastic even if we have seen it before in different variations (how many times has New York been destroyed now?). However after the sheer global terror is pretty much finished we suddenly become much more small scale and the film looses much of it's impact and it's pace. After the initial danger has passed the film uses illogical and silly plot devices to put the survivors at risk – a cold eye of a storm, blood infections, creeping ice and wolves are among the problems. While this is OK on a genre level it doesn't compare to the first hour and it gets a little dull and plodding at times. The clichés are all present and correct: the politicians, the upright scientists, the sacrifice, the daring rescues and so on. It's fair to say that if you are looking for more than a basic script then you will be looking in the wrong place here. All this film does is to provide spectacle and moments of dramatic action – if you want to think about it then you will only hurt your enjoyment of the action. The film tries to deliver an environmental message but in a way this film will not help the environmental movement because it is too exaggerated to be taken seriously (like the idea of Celtic and Man Utd reaching the Champions League final – during this season? Please!), however it does include several surprisingly barbed attacks on the US administration (could the VP look any more like Cheney?). Just a shame that the film message is delivered with all the subtlety that Segal showed when he did something similar in his environmental action film On Deadly Ground. The script doesn't really create characters either and it means we don't care that much about what happens to them in the final hour (countless millions are dead for goodness sake!). The dialogue in the first hour is nicely gruff and scientific and very genre but the second hour is more human and the lines aren't suited for that – not even in the hands of an impressive number of good actors. I like Quaid and he is a good lead here, he gets the good scientific stuff and only is lumbered with the rather silly notion of walking to New York from Washington. Gyllenhaal must have upset legions of cult fan boys by appearing in a big budget movie but he does OK with the role (despite looking too old to be in school). The rest of the cast are fairly mixed but, as with the genre, they are just filled even if some are good. Welsh is good even if he was cast for his similarity to Dick Cheney, Holm adds a small bit of dignity in his role as well as being supported by the very fine actor Lester in a minor role. Faces like Sanders, Mihok and a few others don't really matter as they are merely victims waiting for their turn to be used for dramatic effect. Overall the first hour of this film is good on a blockbuster level, but it blows it's wad too early (don't ya hate it when that happens?!) and is left with a second hour that is right out of the 1970's with all the weaknesses that that entails. Generally I enjoyed the film because I was just expecting a big noisy movie to pass a few hours – bad script, no characters and lots of clichés? Why would I be surprised by that? It's par for the course and you should not watch this if you know these aspects will annoy you. As it is, it's an average film but one that is noisy and spectacular enough to pass muster in the summer blockbuster stakes.

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• It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel okay.

  Victor Field2004-06-06

  "The Day After Tomorrow" is a disaster movie, but it isn't a disastrous one. But if Roland Emmerich really thought he was making a movie with a message, he didn't quite succeed - to be honest, Emmerich is to serious film-making as Naomi Wolf is to recommending "Voluptuous" magazine. The fact that the movie begins with the Twentieth Century Fox logo under stormy skies doesn't make it any more significant. Well-intentioned it may be, but the movie's plot takes second place to the imagery - the opening credits over an icy landscape, the massive weather systems over the planet, colossal hailstones pelting down on Tokyo, snowstorms over India, tidal waves - and the numerous effects houses make it an eye candy feast, especially for people with a grudge against the Big Apple (kudos to Industrial Light and Magic, Digital Domain and all the less renowned FX companies involved). So on that level, it works; the music by Harald Kloser and Thomas Wanker is also a bonus, being more restrained and serious in its support than is usually the way with Emmerich movies. And then there's the script - it has a whole load of characters but doesn't do much with any of them. Example: Climatologist Dennis Quaid's relationship with son Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't seem to be as estranged as it's intended to be, and similarly the friendship Quaid has with a longtime colleague gets about as much emphasis as the crush his younger colleague has on fellow scientist Tamlyn Tomita (and the movie pays for it later on in a sequence shamelessly ripped off from "Vertical Limit," which has little of the emotional resonance it should). In fact, all the human elements - Gyllenhaal's repressed feelings for classmate Emmy Rossum, his doctor mother Sela Ward's problems with a young patient, etc - all of them are underdeveloped or just plain undeveloped, and some moments practically scream "Contrived Climax Ahoy!" Those moments are there because "The Day After Tomorrow" doesn't have an enemy as a natural outgrowth of its story; the elements aren't really villainous as they have no concept of right or wrong, and the closest thing to a villain here is the current administration in the White House, so Emmerich and co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff have to impose a tangible enemy (why else are those wolves there?) on the proceedings. This does help things from getting totally boring in the second half, though it's still pretty watchable even then - but if some more thought had been put into the screenplay, like exploring the characters or developing the promising ideas therein (like Americans fleeing to Mexico, or further looks at the Government side), it would have carried more weight and made the movie into more than an improvement on "Godzilla." As it is, it's a competently done if implausible attention-holder that wants to be more; that it actually had the potential to be more makes it a bit of a disappointment, but at least it's a watchable one.

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• Flash, Glamour, and Faulty Science

  scott-keiser2008-12-18

  As an atmospheric scientist I was intrigued to see this movie. The basic premise of this movie is based on the idea of anthropogenically induced (human) global warming resulting in a catastrophic set of weather events that in a matter of a week will plunge the Earth into its next ice age. This movie above all else is a fictional, over exaggerated drama of well done special effects, poor acting, the most basic and mundane of plots, and a romance between two characters trapped in the New York Public Library. The main theme of the plot is a a classical man v. nature struggle with a father trying to rescue his son and several friends after a climate changing storm that left behind meters of snow and ice, a group of friends who struggle to survive in New York during and after the storm, and the romance that develops in which the girl becomes ill because of an injury. As an atmospheric scientist I was very disappointed. Their are very few scientific truths in this movie. This movie came out in response to a surge in global warming alarmism and portrays the cause quite well in that it is completely over exaggerated, is primarily a political tool, utilizes faulty science to scare people, and is all flash with no meaningful substance. While not the worst movie of all time it is very close to the bottom. Summary: The acting and plot are poor. The science in the movie like that behind global warming alarmism is highly flawed. The only thing that saves this movie is its special effects.

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• Oh! The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

  BaronBl00d2004-12-24

  I really enjoyed this film by director Roland Emmerich a great deal. It is a fast-paced, exciting, suspenseful film filled with wonderful images, great CGI effects, plausible acting, and even a coherent script. How realistic is it? I hope not at all, but the director made the film so that it seems very real and like something that MIGHT happen. The story revolves around some major climatic shifts that cause the entire Northern hemisphere to become Artic tundra. New York City is devastated as are other major cities all over Europe. Dennis Quaid gives a good performance as a climatologist that predicted some of these events. We see things through his perspective and that of his son for much of the movie. The acting in general is good in this film. I particularly liked Ian Holm's role as the British meteorologist stuck in the middle of nowhere while these changes advanced. Much of the credit for the film's success must go to Emmerich. This is easily one of his best films. He keeps his viewer on the edge of his/her seat through the entire film. Action is the film's primary objective, but Emmerich also uses a lot of humanity in what his character's motivations are, and I for one, enjoyed seeing that side of humanity rather than what I probably would see under similar circumstances. As a previous viewer noted, this is a great popcorn movie!

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• Ridiculous Story, But Fun To Watch

  ccthemovieman-12006-10-05

  I was leery of a heavy propaganda piece on "global warming," but I still saw this and found that, yeah that's what it was but it was really more of just a straight adventure story than anything else.....and not a bad one, at that. The first 50 minutes of this two-hour film have the "fun parts" where the special-effects dominate. We see all kinds of radical weather disasters that are extremely dramatic and entertaining to watch, even if they don't make a bit of sense. After the blizzard and sub-zero, unlivable weather conditions arrive the movie settles down to a young romance and survival story with Jake Gyllenhaal, Emily Rossum and other people trapped in a library in New York City and Jake's father, played by Dennis Quaid, walking all the way from Philadelphia to rescue him. Yes, it's very, very far-fetched - the whole thing - but it's a fun adventure story with nice people. It's especially refreshing to see Hollywood portray a father as being so loving and selfless. The romance wasn't overdone and the young people were not profane and/or annoying, as so often is the case. Except for the over-exaggerated and extremely erroneous scare tactics of this movie, and a ridiculous portrayal of the Vice Preseint of the United States, the movie works strictly as an entertaining fantasy-adventure story.

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