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93 of 148 people found the following review helpful:
I Think I'll Have A Cold One. . ., May 31, 2004
We humans are such sinners. We pillage and plunder our planet's natural resources, carelessly and indignantly burn our fossil fuels, and throw caution to the wind for our wanton irresponsiblity. Well, to coin a classic phrase, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." And she's one broad you don't dare want to mess with, as the disaster-laden THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW attests. In a movie that must have environmentalists and tree huggers worldwide grinning from pierced ear to pierced ear, we humans are forced at last to atone for the sin of global warming--a sin that melts the polar caps and brings on another Ice Age (in about the time it takes to play a baseball game). Forget the plot. It's worse than bad--it's trite, banal, hackneyed, threadbare, and worn-out all rolled into one. Dennis Quaid is the climatologist who predicts doom but is subsequently ignored by his greedy government; he also has a son who ends up trapped in New York. The beautiful Sela Ward plays the standard this-disaster-epic-must-have-a-female-lead-who-spends-her-time-wringing-her-hands-and-looking-worried-and-then-cries part. Ian Holm, for goodness sake, is Bilbo Baggins, not some Scottish scientist about to go into the deep freeze, and Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Quaid's and Ward's son, has a constant smirk on his face that I could never figure out. As I said, forget the plot. This movie's strength is its visual onslaught of destruction and disaster on a global scale--from tornadoes ravaging Los Angeles (Why do LA TV reporters feel compelled to cover a twister a stone's throw away on live TV?) to three cataclysmic "blizzard hurricanes" that devour the Northern Hemisphere. The special effects are well-done, and jarring; seeing a huge tidal wave overtake the Statue of Liberty and then sweep relentlessly into Manhattan (Why didn't Brooklyn and Queens get equal time?) is bone-chilling. Throw in a pack of hungry wolves escaped from the zoo and an eye of each storm that plunges the temperature minus 150 degrees in a matter of seconds, and you've got a virtual kitchen sink of gloom and doom. Our fearless government reluctantly acts; in a huge twist of irony, the U.S. is evacuated, with its citizens streaming into Mexico, and the northern states take on a popsicle effect. It's all great fun to watch. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW succeeds on the visual, and fails dismally on everything else. Now I've got to go get my twelve-pack out of the freezer. I want to see what frozen beer tastes like.
--D. Mikels
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105 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
A message to those who use hairspray while driving SUVs, October 27, 2004
There's no two ways about it...filmmaker Roland Emmerich really despises New York...three of his last four films depict some level of destruction within the Big Apple. Why does he hate it so? I have no idea, but he also doesn't seem all that found of Los Angeles, either...
The Day After Tomorrow (2004), written, produced and directed by Roland Emmerich stars Dennis Quaid (who'd been having a really decent run of good films, up until now, that is...), and Jake Gyllenhaal, who seems to bounce between really good movies (Donnie Darko) to really lousy ones (Bubble Boy, Highway). Also appearing is Emmy Rossum (who bares a remarkable resemblance, at times, to American Pie's Elizabeth Shannon), Jay O. Sanders (Daylight), Perry King (The Lords of Flatbush), Kenneth Walsh (Miracle), Sela `yowsa, yowsa' Ward, and Ian `Bilbo Baggins' Holm.
Okay...Jack Hall (Quaid) is a paleoclimatologist...what's that, you say? Well, apparently it's someone who studies the weather of the past, using ice core samples from the artic and sophisticated computer programs...more or less a glorified weatherman. During his research, he's found evidence to support the world is soon (soon meaning anywhere from 100 to 1,000 years) heading for another ice age, but no one is taking him too seriously, especially not the haughty Vice President (Walsh), probably due to the fact the weather reports we get on the TV are usually only right about half the time, so why should we jump through hoops for this clown? Surprise, surprise, it turns out Walsh is right (but his timing is way off...typical weatherman) as the poopie hits the fan...big time. Hail the size of footballs in Japan, tornadoes in LA, tide waves and crazy snow in New York (haven't they suffered enough?), all resulting in a global climate change, which doesn't sound all that bad, but basically the entire northern hemisphere is buried under ice and snow...a lot of ice and snow...and temperatures are dropping. Oh why didn't they listen to Hall? The fools...the frozen fools...
I will say this...The Day After Tomorrow sported some of the best special effects I've seen in awhile. The wide scale destruction of major cities was very intense (Irwin Allen, the master of disaster, the man who brought us all those wonderful 70's disaster movie, would have been proud)...also, I thought the acting was passable, which is sad, given the experienced cast involved, but they were just doing what they were told. If I were to rate this film on the special effects alone, it would be five stars, but I have to also consider the other aspects, the story, the dialog and such. It's these elements (or lack of) that ultimately derailed the film, for me at least. Emmerich seems to try and dazzle the audience with glossy special effects in hope we won't put too much thought into all the holes, large and small, that riddle the plot. I remember when I saw Emmerich's Independence Day (1996) for the first time, I was really taken with the film, but subsequent viewings revealed the paper thin construction, allowing the story to collapse in on itself...here, I need not watch the film again as the flimsy nature came through like a sledgehammer to the head...and Emmerich lays on the schmaltzy, maudlin sentimentality, disguised in the form of altruistic self sacrifice and heroism, about as thick as he lays the snows on New York...I would have thought it difficult to top the gushy, slushy, saccharine sweet goo presented in Independence Day, but I was wrong, as here, he turns it into an art form. The dialog was just awful...I was surprised some of the actors managed to get their lines out while keeping a straight face. Also, the dialog was entirely predictable, especially between the pregnant pauses meant to heighten the emotional level for the drivel soon to follow...I actually found myself speaking lines before they were spoken in the film, as it was that obvious as to what was coming. And the film seems inundated with a preachy smugness...yes, we consume fossil fuels and use resources from the Earth, but does that necessarily make us evil and deserving of the scenario played out in this film? I love it when Hollywood, in all of its shallow gloriousness, tries to teach the rest of the world what's wrong with us. This is a big difference between Emmerich and Irwin Allen...Allen made disaster films to engage and entertain, while Emmerich seems to use the medium as a means to tell us the error of our so called destructive ways, and showing the ruinous consequences that result. Ahh, I've stood on my soapbox long enough...here's some scenes to watch for...the one, after New York is frozen, with the homeless man teaching the rich kid, who normally wouldn't have given the filthy man the time of day, how to use newspapers and such to insulate himself by stuffing them in his clothes...can you see the irony here? The homeless, once a burden on our society, have now, after the disaster, found purpose in advising the uninitiated on how to survive, as they've had to do living on the mean streets. Everyone go out and befriend a homeless person now, before it's too late...okay, how about this scene...the kids, now stuck in the Manhattan library after the storm, are scrounging for food, and break into some vending machines. The homeless guy suggests looking in the trash cans, as there's always something to eat in trash cans (yeah, okay...I'll tell you what my stinky friend, I'll eat the potato chips and M&M;'s and you can have whatever edible, maggot infested morsels you find rummaging in the garbage)...again, infinitely invaluable advice from the homeless...
I won't bother going into all the special features on the DVD, as this site lists them adequately, but there's really not that much, as you have to link to the meatier features through a weblink provided on the DVD, which seems very cheap and cumbersome...
Cookieman108
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Good effects, worthwhile points - , November 28, 2004
- but I ran into problems trying to care about any of the characters.
One very good point is that "global warming" doesn't necessarily mean that everything gets warmer everywhere. It does mean that the world's weather is a mchine driven by heat, and that warming is like nitro in the gas tank. Hots get hotter, colds get colder, everything becomes more of whatever it was, and not necessarily where you'd expect. Another good point is that indirect effects, like shifts in ocean currents, may exert surprisingly strong control over the climate.
For dramatic purposes, all those effects were compressed from decades to days or even minutes. Rising ocean levels were crammed into a single wave that flooded New York to waist depth on the Statue of Liberty. Nice effects, but I just don't think many buildings would be left standing if hit by a wall of water ten storeys high. Maybe, opposite of the intuitive result, global warming could trigger a new ice age. That would certainly be dramatic, but I suspect that it would take more than the hour or two shown here.
Set your expectations properly: it's just a disaster movie, about as plausible as those asteroid movies a couple of years ago. If you've already dedicated yourself to a useless evening, you may as well watch this.
//wiredweird
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