Entertaining, but nothing original. *MAY HAVE SPOILERS(not sure though)*

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2004)

My 13 year old daughter and I just saw "The Day After Tomorrow"; even one of her youth and limited number of viewing experiences could pick out the similarities this movie had with others (The Core, Vertical Limit, The Poseidon Adventure, etc.). I've been around long enough to have enjoyed the 70's disaster movies period, which was far superior than the current one.
TDAT went down easy and the time passed quickly, but there wasn't a lick of originality to be found. Oh sure, the effects are bigger and better; however, you could predict almost everything that happened, from beginning to end, including the shmaltzy uplifting finale. Character development seemed to be sacrificed for unnecessary "plot points"(the wolves, a terminally ill child, the character who would die without medication, and the "love" story); consequently the movie had little emotional impact. Still, I found it far more enjoyable than the thoroughly unfortunate ID4.
I must disagree with an earlier writer who felt that Dennis Quaid's character wouldn't have gone after his son. Clearly the writer doesn't have children. If my daughter was stuck somewhere in life-threatening conditions and I knew how to cross the tundra, you can bet I would.
Much has been said of scientific believability or lack of it; my addition to this part of the discussion is more basic. With all the sophisticated effects in today's movies, how did the makers forget to add breath vapors to characters in these subzero temperatures? And there wasn't a single runny nose! :)
In my overall analysis, Roland Emmerich seems to make entertaining movies that start big(look, ideas, approach) but become small; they begin as epic motion pictures and shrink to the size of our TV screens by their end. TDAT struck me as the latest one of these.