The Day After Tomorrow (*1/2)
review by Jon Waterman

Well, looks like the world as we know it is going to come to an end. The polar icecaps have melted and are now causing freak weather occurrences such as tornadoes in Hollywood. Very rapidly, most of the northern hemisphere will become subject to tremendous storms and floods which will freeze over with temperatures so cold, lives will end instantly. A new ice age is coming. As if that weren’t bad enough, the scientist who predicted this tragedy must trek over the snow across several states to reach his son who’s trapped in New York. Oh my.

For a global disaster movie, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. There was the main storyline and a tiny bit of side story with three scientists in Glasgow, but that’s it. You were either with the father or the son. Neither of them I cared to follow. To be honest, I didn’t really see the point of the father going to get the son with the deadly storms fast approaching in the first place. He only had gear and supplies for himself and his crew. What were they going to do when they got there? Maybe I let my mind wander during that explanation, but it seemed like a horribly trite way to create more tension when the storm and the general need for survival could and should be enough. Add to that the wolf thing…. The son was gathered up with some people in the New York Public Library. They teased us with a couple short interchanges between an intellectual teenager and a male librarian. Those were fun to watch and I wanted to see more of that kind of thing. The relationship stuff (romantic or non) didn’t work for me. Show us how this is affecting several different groups of people, not just one family.

Obviously in a big budget blockbuster like this, the science is going to be off to aid the story. So, I don’t care how plausible some of this stuff is. What I care about is does it look cool. Yeah...kinda…I guess. It’s what you’d expect. Nothing here will surprise you or wow you. You either saw it in the poster or in the commercial or in your mind beforehand. Despite what they’d have you believe, there’s no poignant imagery here. The Statue of Liberty is surrounded by snow and ice. So what? Show us the world’s monuments. What would have been really nice would be to show how society begins adapting after the snow has settled and societies can resume with their new situation.

The acting was pretty good, though. We have professional, legitimate actors (Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Ian Holm) doing the best they can with some cheesy summer flick dialogue.

So, the story sucked. The effects were standard, but director/co-writer Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”) tried to impact us in the wrong way. The acting was above average. Despite what I wanted to see and didn’t, the film was still fun overall. I can’t for the life of me figure out why some of the story choices were made, but hey. It’s summer. Just let it go.

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