Everyone has probably been there, you set off on a trip that you have been looking forward too for weeks only to find that bloody rain cloud strike at the most inappropriate of moments, and if that is such a popular scenario, then THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW could have been a very relatable film. I mean, sure, in true Hollywood tradition it is a highly exaggerated version of that situation, but you can still imagine the frustration of a character as one minute he's on a school trip trying to get in with the girl of his dreams and the next he's drowning in a flooded out library. It's just a shame that THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW is such an unemotional and baddly paced journey that you just won't care.
In a scene worthy of mentioning in the very same sentence as the truly atrocious and fake looking opening of VERTICAL LIMIT, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW starts with a doctor called Jack, played by Dennis Quaid, who seems more than happy to look permanently grumpy throughout the film while his team of no less than two unlively followers discovers that an ice cap has just split in two and there will probably be a drastic climate shift in a few hundred years which will change the world for the worse!!! (or least that's what we are told anyway, and pretty much all we are told for that matter). He then goes home and drops his Son off at the airport,
he's flying to New York on that said trip you see and he doesn't like planes so in a cringe worthy moment the aircraft hits turbulence and becomes unstable even though we know it will never crash, as the film has only just started and it would be silly to kill off half the films cast in the first ten minutes now wouldn't it?. When he gets down on the ground however, things get bad and after L.A. is hit by gigantic twisters and the Scottish Highlands completely turned to ice, New York is flooded by a tidal wave that would make Godzilla run to the hills. You see Jack was right, there is a climate shift on the cards, only it is much more imminent than he thought and the world only has roughly a week left before the entire planet, north of the equator, will be at a new ice age. Knowing there is only one thing left to do, he sets off on a trek half way across America through the harsh weather to find and save his only child!!!.
Coming from the maker of INDEPENDENCE DAY, STARGATE and GODZILLA, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW was probably never going to be a work of art and for a number of minutes (make that about twenty in total) it entertains thanks to some wonderful special effects showing the destruction of the mentioned locations. Yet for much of the rest of its runtime there really isn't much of a movie here. Sure Emmerich's direction is actually good most of the time, showing neither Michael Bay's penchant for punishing quick cuts or Paul Andersons inability to point the camera in a decent direction. This is a well made blockbuster and his best job behind the camera, trouble is little else here impresses as much. Thanks to a script that features the kind of pacing that seems to have been plotted half while on a coffee high and half when ready for bed, the movie often feels incoherent and inconsistent. Starting off with a bang, the film keeps hinting at something that it only ever really half delivers thanks to what seems to have been a deliberate, honourable, if misguided attempt to actually avoid the clichés and expected pacing often found within the genre and let the disaster take its course constantly throughout the movie from the very first scene to the final fade out. The screenplay just can't pull it off though, and by the final third it becomes such a fragile mess full of instances such as a chase sequence that had potential to be exciting if it didn't both look fake (CGI wolves, "What The Hell?" screams the audience) and feel very forced into the story just because it needed some kind of action sequence to happen towards the end. Similarly Jack's hike across north America should have been spectacular and epic, yet with the exception of a half decent bit of tension featured in its one action sequence the rest of this story arc feels more like a stroll into town than it does through miles and miles of snow. This is thanks to a lack of focus and no real explanation of time passing by, bar a couple of boring shots that feature a tent every so often that you probably wont even notice before the action cuts back to the son's story.
The cast do their best though, even if Quaid looks aggravated by his cheesy dialogue, Jake Gyllenhaal is likeable enough as the son to turn his two dimensional, soulless, walking cliché into something slightly interesting thanks to his ability to show decent comic timing. No matter how bad his lines and no matter how little he has to work with, he brings a much needed warmth. The supporting cast are all mainly wasted, Ian Holm is obviously there for the money in a thankless role where all he does is explain certain plot points to the audience before being written out in the least imaginative way possible and Emily Rossum is absolutely delectable to look at, but has even less of a character than anyone else to work with as Gyllenhaal's girl.
I probably sound harsh, because in reality, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW passes the time decently enough (well it does when things are being destroyed anyway), yet the template is there for something much more. The fantastic effects are well and truly in place and this is a well made piece of cinema, yet it never feels as big as it should and never contains anywhere near the amount of emotional involvement it needs to grasp your attention. With tighter editing and a better screenplay this could have been the movie to breath life into a practically dead genre, yet in the end it just shows reason why it should stay buried.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1945 - Drama - Director: David Lean - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Production Year: 1999 - Drama - Director: Dick Maas - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: William Hurt, Jennifer Tilly, Denis Leary, Michael Chiklis, Francesca Brown
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Advantages: Good special effects. good (and possible) storyline, a bit educational for the interested Disadvantages: a bit 'cheesy', a bit melodramatic and end is v. predictable
![The Day After Tomorrow - Two Disc Edition [DVD] [2004]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78519533.jpg "The Day After Tomorrow - Two Disc Edition [DVD] [2004]")
Feb 26th, 2006
very helpful by (100%):
