It's a Disaster!
by
Don Larsson

Some conservatives are warning that The Day After Tomorrow is another example of Hollywood liberals trying to spread environmentalist propaganda to the unwitting masses. Some liberals are hailing it for raising the public's consciousness about global warming. Some critics are shrugging their shoulders and falling back on their reliable all-service judgment: "It's just a good summer movie." They are all wrong.

Which isn't to say that the movie doesn't try to be all those things. It feebly slaps at a President who entrusts all his decisions to an older, bespectacled Vice President who himself cannot be bothered with facts when it comes to scientific matters. It mutters momentarily about the results of ignoring the Kyoto Protocols on global warming. It trots out most of the plot clichés from Disaster Movies For Dummies. It churns out digital disasters like a data printout. And it's bad, bad, bad!

Dennis Quaid is Jack Hall, the intrepid lone wolf paleoclimatologist who becomes alarmed when a big chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf shears off right in the middle of his camp, giving him a chance to show that he is brave and impetuous by jumping across the crevasse for his core samples, then jump back, slip, and dangle like a hooked flounder. Convinced that a massive climatic change is underway, he heads to New Delhi for a scientific conference consisting of himself, the Vice President of the US, three Saudis in keffiyehs, and three guys in fezzes (Shriners perhaps). Clearly, the deck is stacked here, but when he walks out into the New Delhi snowstorm (not a cause for concern for anyone but pedestrians, it seems), he finds a sympathetic ear from Ian Holm as the Wise Old Scientist Who Will Die in a While.

Weather happens. Giant tornadoes tear apart LA (while the local Action News weather folk stand in their paths and gape). Cantaloupe-sized hail (described as "golf-ball size") pummels Tokyo while ordinary folk stand in the street and gape. And up in space, the space station astronauts note giant storm patterns forming symmetrically over the northern hemisphere. Nobody in the government is much concerned, except for our intrepid lone wolf. But even he has more important things to attend to. His marriage (to Sela Ward, still in Once and Again mode) is rocky. He has been ignoring the Resentful Teenage Son (Jake Gyllenhall) who got an F in math because he's "smarter than the teacher" and doesn't have to show him no steenkin' solutions on his quiz. But duty calls, and Jack's off again to see what's going on with that wacky weather. Wife, a pediatric onconologist, goes off to tend to the Cute Sick Kid. (If only she had a guitar and sang!) Son goes off to a Nerd Decathlon in NYC with his partners, the Cute Smart Girl (Emmy Rossum - -the only one of the "kids" who's close to the right age) and the Smart Black Kid.

More weather happens. The climate changes. Folks in Scotland walk outside and are flash-frozen. The Wise Old Scientist dies. A giant flood hits NYC and flash-freezes, trapping the Smart Kids in the New York Public Library, where they ignore paneling, desks, chairs, etc., and burn books to stay warm. It snows in DC, which, as usual, finally gets the government's attention. Everyone skips out of town except for the Doctor Wife and the Cute Sick Kid. The President is lost, but that's about as important as snow in New Delhi.

Now, it's a commonplace of disaster movies to have the heroes outracing the impending disaster source-rising water, flowing lava, and especially great balls of fire. In this movie, the heroes outrace -- frost. Surprisingly, they are not chased across the ice by the wolves.

All of this is hootable enough to be reasonably entertaining, and I like seeing monuments of civilization being mowed down by forces of nature as much as the next guy, but I had a much better time watching the truly laughable made-for-TV earthquake film disaster (sic) 10.5, a few weeks ago. Director Roland Emmerich couldn't find dramatic tension in a scene if it was twisted around his neck, and cinematographer Ueli Steiger doesn't seem to care where his camera is pointed during any particular scene. The Day After Tomorrow is bad science, bad writing, and bad camera work. It's so bad that it makes The Poseidon Adventure look like a masterpiece. Where are Shelly Winters and Ernest Borgnine when you really need them?

©2004 Don Larsson
CineScene