Review: The Day After Tomorrow
Tuesday, June 1; Regal Falmouth #5
* * * (out of 4)
Propaganda movies have always been somewhat hard to swallow, regardless of the point of view they pushed. Anything that is so solidly one-sided strikes me as being flawed from the beginning, so hearing that environmentalist group the Sierra Club was holding a private screening of this film on opening day very much paled any high hopes I had for it. And yes, The Day After Tomorrow is the best propaganda film that the EPA never paid for. The message of preservation and conservation is out in force, and at times it crosses into arrogance, but most of the time, it’s a forgettable motive for a really fun disaster movie.
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a climatologist who has discovered an alarming trend; at the rate the polar ice caps are melting due to global warming, the North Atlantic current could shift, and earth could experience a global-killing event within a few generations, sending the planet into another ice age. He advises immediate change to prevent the consequences in a hundred years, but his advice is wholly ignored by the vice president (Kenneth Welsh). Hall’s estimate was far too optimistic, it seems, when climate changes begin to have catastrophic results within the week – tornados in Los Angeles, baseball-sized hail in China, and massive flooding and freezing in the northern hemisphere. With a new ice age upon the Earth, Jack attempts to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) from snow-buried New York City while the government attempts to save as many people as possible.
This movie thrives on its destruction. Many movies have tried to use the world-killing scenario, but not many have done it well. Armageddon and Deep Impact threw most science to the wind using Earth-bound asteroids, and the fact that most of The Day After Tomorrow’s science is solid is the most frightening aspect. The idea that somehow, someday, this could really happen (granted, not to this scale) enhances the movie that much more, and definitely delivers the intended environmental message. Everyone will walk out of this movie with a sincere feeling that it’s time to pay a little bit more attention, and stop pissing off Mother Nature.
Unfortunately, once the film moves beyond the awe-inspiring images of disaster, it slows down… a lot. Quaid’s Jack Hall is not the typical action hero. Director/writer Roland Emmerich really likes this nerdy hero style; Quaid is playing the same character that Jeff Goldblum played in Independence Day, but Quaid can’t crack jokes. Gyllenhaal is decent, but a lot of time is spent with his Sam and Sam’s friends, and not much is done with them. Their only purpose is one act of heroism by Sam and his friends to save the life of another friend (Emmy Rossum). None of it is terribly interesting, but it at least tries to give a feeling of human perseverance, even in the face of extreme adversity.
A lot of what goes on after the first hour of mayhem is slow and mistimed, but Emmerich does provide for some beautifully frightening shots of the “new” Earth – space footage of storms covering entire continents, and a particularly effective sequence where Jack, on his way into New York City, walks past a frozen Statue of Liberty, now buried up to her crown in show. This idea of supposed human invincibility placed entirely at nature’s mercy is beautifully presented, and hands down delivers the film’s best moments. A better character-driven plot needed to be built around it, or Emmerich should have stuck to what he was doing best. Even still, as disaster movies go, nothing comes to mind that can top this one.
Tuesday, June 1; Regal Falmouth #5
* * * (out of 4)
Propaganda movies have always been somewhat hard to swallow, regardless of the point of view they pushed. Anything that is so solidly one-sided strikes me as being flawed from the beginning, so hearing that environmentalist group the Sierra Club was holding a private screening of this film on opening day very much paled any high hopes I had for it. And yes, The Day After Tomorrow is the best propaganda film that the EPA never paid for. The message of preservation and conservation is out in force, and at times it crosses into arrogance, but most of the time, it’s a forgettable motive for a really fun disaster movie.
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a climatologist who has discovered an alarming trend; at the rate the polar ice caps are melting due to global warming, the North Atlantic current could shift, and earth could experience a global-killing event within a few generations, sending the planet into another ice age. He advises immediate change to prevent the consequences in a hundred years, but his advice is wholly ignored by the vice president (Kenneth Welsh). Hall’s estimate was far too optimistic, it seems, when climate changes begin to have catastrophic results within the week – tornados in Los Angeles, baseball-sized hail in China, and massive flooding and freezing in the northern hemisphere. With a new ice age upon the Earth, Jack attempts to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) from snow-buried New York City while the government attempts to save as many people as possible.
This movie thrives on its destruction. Many movies have tried to use the world-killing scenario, but not many have done it well. Armageddon and Deep Impact threw most science to the wind using Earth-bound asteroids, and the fact that most of The Day After Tomorrow’s science is solid is the most frightening aspect. The idea that somehow, someday, this could really happen (granted, not to this scale) enhances the movie that much more, and definitely delivers the intended environmental message. Everyone will walk out of this movie with a sincere feeling that it’s time to pay a little bit more attention, and stop pissing off Mother Nature.
Unfortunately, once the film moves beyond the awe-inspiring images of disaster, it slows down… a lot. Quaid’s Jack Hall is not the typical action hero. Director/writer Roland Emmerich really likes this nerdy hero style; Quaid is playing the same character that Jeff Goldblum played in Independence Day, but Quaid can’t crack jokes. Gyllenhaal is decent, but a lot of time is spent with his Sam and Sam’s friends, and not much is done with them. Their only purpose is one act of heroism by Sam and his friends to save the life of another friend (Emmy Rossum). None of it is terribly interesting, but it at least tries to give a feeling of human perseverance, even in the face of extreme adversity.
A lot of what goes on after the first hour of mayhem is slow and mistimed, but Emmerich does provide for some beautifully frightening shots of the “new” Earth – space footage of storms covering entire continents, and a particularly effective sequence where Jack, on his way into New York City, walks past a frozen Statue of Liberty, now buried up to her crown in show. This idea of supposed human invincibility placed entirely at nature’s mercy is beautifully presented, and hands down delivers the film’s best moments. A better character-driven plot needed to be built around it, or Emmerich should have stuck to what he was doing best. Even still, as disaster movies go, nothing comes to mind that can top this one.
posted by Matt S. at
8:52 PM
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