There’s only one thing worse than getting caught in a new Ice Age that kills millions, buries Manhattan in a giant popsicle, and can freeze people in seconds.
And that, my friends, is wolves. Angry, snarling, very resilient wolves. This and other kooky warnings are found in “The Day After Tomorrow,” an initially engaging but eventually laughable disaster movie.
This summer blockbuster blasts off from fears of global warming. Scientist Dennis Quaid has determined that, because of our mistreatment of the environment, global warming will heat the polar ice caps, throwing the earth’s ecosystem (especially global warming currents) off kilter and bringing on the ice. The big freeze could happen in a hundred years, or maybe the day after tomorrow.
Nobody, especially an obtuse U.S. vice president, heeds his predictions. Sure enough, the wacky weather we’ve been having lately escalates (hail the size of melons falling on Tokyo), and ocean temperatures begin to drop. Giant storms blanket the northern hemisphere in snow.
This is a bad week for the entire planet, to be sure, but director Roland Emmerich decides to focus on the problems of Quaid and son Jake Gyllenhaal. The son is holed up in New York’s Public Library, along with a girlfriend (Emmy Rossum), burning books to keep warm.
So we spend a lot of time watching Quaid traipse across the snows to get to his son. (At which point he will – what? Help him? How? The whole world’s frozen over.) Quaid has a great deal of parental neglect to atone for, and this is the only way.
Emmerich, the director of “Independence Day” and “Godzilla,” maintains his track record of fun ideas and lousy dialogue. (The acting is awful too.) The opening half-hour has some dandy summer-movie teasers, as the knowledge of the encroaching disaster comes to light.
Two sensational special-effects sequences anchor the rest of the first hour. First off, tornadoes hit Los Angeles, with dire results for the Hollywood sign. It’s odd how, in movies, the biggest landmarks are always targeted. It’s as though Mother Nature knew.
Then, the seas crest around Manhattan. Emmerich may be a dud at directing actors, but when he sinks his teeth into something like this, look out. Or better yet, get to a high place, because a wall of water bashing through the streets of New York is the movie’s most awe-inspiring spectacle.
Consciously or not, both sequences carry echoes of the attack on the World Trade Center. It’s kind of weird watching stuff like this, and maybe it taps into a pop-culture need to re-live, make sense of, or otherwise work though that real-life disaster.
The cast includes Ian Holm, Sela Ward, and Glenn Plummer as a homeless guy who gets a few rare good lines. There is a subplot involving a little cancer patient that would have been considered old-fashioned goo a hundred years ago. Strangely, I enjoy Emmerich’s cheesy side; he’s like a 12-year-old kid who makes $100 million movies.
There have been news stories lately debating the movie’s science (which the filmmakers themselves admit is wildly exaggerated). A few of the digs at governmental ignorance of global warming are amusing, as is the idea Americans will be streaming illegally over the border into Mexico when the snow hits.
Aside from watching out for the wolves, that’s another lesson from “The Day After Tomorrow.” Starting thinking “south.” Paraguay is going to look pretty good when everything north of Phoenix is covered in ice.
A wall of water slamming into New York City is one of the highlights of “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Robert Horton
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