The Day After Tomorrow

Ealasaid/ May 31, 2004/ Movie Reviews and Features

Originally written for The Milpitas Post
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok, Ian Holm
Rated: PG-13 for intense situations of peril.
Parental Notes: Although some of the perilous situations may be a bit much for youngsters, this isn’t a particularly gruesome movie. There are shots of people frozen to death and other deaths, but they’re fairly bloodless.

“The Day After Tomorrow” is the best kind of guilty pleasure movie. It has great acting, an emotional script, mind-boggling special effects sequences, and a point most of us can agree with while patting ourselves on the back. This is a hyped-up morality tale about global warming, and although the effects are magnified drastically, it boils down to an acknowledged truth: if we don’t care for our environment it will eventually turn on us.

The story revolves around the family of Dr. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a scientist who studies ancient weather patterns. He finds evidence that the last major ice age struck with surprising swiftness, but his warnings are dismissed by all except Dr. Terry Rapson (Ian Holm), a British weather scientist who finds evidence that Hall might be right. Soon the evidence is incontrovertible: tornadoes in Los Angeles, gigantic hail in Tokyo, and flooding in New York, where Hall’s son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is participating in an academic competition.

Once the government starts taking Hall seriously, he is given the wherewithal to run proper computer simulations, and he learns that the new ice age will strike in a matter of days as super-charged funnel storms whip air from the sub-zero stratosphere down onto the land and sea. The northern half of the United States is about to become uninhabitable, and Sam is trapped along with his friends. Hall, who has worked in Antarctica, sets off to find and rescue his son as the world tries to evacuate everyone they can toward the equator.

There’s a certain amount of gallows humor scattered through the film, with Sam and company holed up in the New York Public Library and burning books to stay warm (why they don’t burn the bookshelves or wooden furniture is never explained, though) and Americans illegally crossing into Mexico seeking warmth. Even so, the film chiefly shines because of its special effects. Jaw-dropping sequences like New York’s flooding, Los Angeles being utterly destroyed by tornadoes, and the like are impressive.

Of course, some bits are predictable. We know that Hall’s wife, a doctor treating children with cancer, will be noble and stay with her ailing patient in spite of the danger. We know that when a student cuts her leg early on, that cut will turn out to be disastrous, and it does. Predictability is the bugaboo of Hollywood movies, but if you enjoy the ride it doesn’t matter much that you can see some curves coming.

The film’s central theory about global warming, that shifts in temperature and a drop in the saltiness of the oceans will change the Atlantic current, is one that has been circulating for a while. The Atlantic current carries warm water up into the Northern Hemisphere, and is responsible for the mild climate that much of Europe and the US enjoy. Disturb that current and our balmy climate will drop. “The Day After Tomorrow” does accelerate the effects of that kind of shift to make it a more exciting film and includes scenes with people outrunning the freezing air brought down by the huge storm systems, but it’s based on a sound scientific premise.

“The Day After Tomorrow” is an exciting ride of a disaster movie. It’s not bogged down with the angst of a world falling apart, it’s full of excitement and suspense. This is as much an adventure movie as a disaster flick, and it’s a great ride.

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