Tune into the Weather Channel for this years end of the world scenario

Rating: 4/10 (20 July 2004)

Back in the 70's, Hollywood producers and directors were overcome by a highly contagious disease known as disaster-itis. Filmmakers seemed to take great delight in blowing up one airplane after another, burning 120 story buildings to the ground, leveling Los Angeles with earthquakes, turning ships upside down, and even going so far as to have the whole state of Texas attacked by Killer Bees. Irwin Allan was the biggest carrier of disaster-itis and unfortunately for him, the longer the disease went unchecked, the more his films sank into an abyss of mediocrity. (See: Allen's The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure & When Time Ran Out). Disaster-itis has never truly left Hollywood. It just lays dormant from year to year, returning sometimes annually, sometimes semi-annually to goad some big name director into giving us another CGI laden special effects extravaganza wreaking havoc on either the good old U.S.A. or the world as we know it. Director and Writer Roland Emmerich is a known carrier of the disaster-itis germ. In 1996 he suffered an outbreak and brought us Aliens doing in Mother Earth in Independence Day. Two scant years later disaster-itis reared it's ugly head again, this time mutating into a Japanese strain of the virus causing Emmerich to bring Godzilla over from Japan. To relieve the symptoms, Roland had Godzilla stomp and chomp his way through New York. Apparently it was enough to send the germ into remission for six long years until Emmerich again was overwhelmed by the disaster-itis germ as if it were a form of incurable herpes.
The culprit Emmerich selected to help rid himself of the disease this time around is global warming. It seems we are nothing but a bunch of careless polluters riding around in our SUV's sending emissions out into the ozone layer. This in turn has caused the polar ice caps to slowly melt away into the oceans. Funny thing about fresh water and salt water is that they don't mix too well. This is not a good thing to happen and is clearly stated so several times by Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), to Vice President Becker (Kenneth Welsh) and anyone else who happens to be within ear shot. Hall says that despite the Arctic meltdown, we have at the minimum a hundred good years left, maybe even a few thousand by which time you and I will be pushing up daisies and be none the wiser. Trouble occurs however because although Hall is a good scientist, he's not a very good fortune teller and underestimates this impending disaster by about a hundred to a thousand years. This means that from coast to coast, from the United States, to Great Britain, and on to Russia, all hell is going to break loose at any moment and in The Day After Tomorrow hell hath no fury like an environment scorned.
Unless you truly have been living up in the Arctic, you know all this already what with the bombardment of television ads, newspaper ads, web site ads and everything else Fox and Emmerich have used to promote this film for the past six years.well it hasn't been that long it just seems like it. If the film turns out to be spectacular all that advertising doesn't matter. If the film comes in as being average or less than okay, just as Emmerich found out with Godzilla, hype will get the fannies into the seats that first weekend, but word of mouth can make your film an even bigger disaster than anything you put on the screen. Does The Day After Tomorrow live up to the hype? We go to the expert from another over hyped Emmerich film for our answer.
'Mr. Godzilla, does The Day After Tomorrow live up to the hype?' Godzilla grins and says, 'Nope.'
The special effects that you have seen in the trailers, in television ads and in the ten minute sneak preview Fox ran before American Idols one evening are spectacular on the big screen with digital surround sound included to blow out your ear drums. There's something awe inspiring about seeing a bunch of twisters circulating around Los Angeles taking out the Hollywood sign, wiping out skyscrapers, crashing helicopters and making a huge mess. In Japan we have huge chunks of ice falling to the ground. In the skies we have super sized thunderstorms giving airline passengers one heck of a bumpy ride. Hurricanes run rampant, and Great Britain gets a very early White Christmas. To top it all off, New York is flooded by a gigantic tidal wave, which then freezes over causing snow to bury much of what's left of the skyline. It's all amazing stuff, but unfortunately there's not enough of it and everything else about the film is as bland as day old toast.
As silly as some of the 70's disaster flicks were they could always be counted on for some entertaining characters occupying the film no matter how cheesy and inept the dialog may become. It didn't matter how inept (Airport 1975) or how good (Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure) those films were, they managed to overcome their weaknesses by making us care about the predicament of those involved. As predictable as they were, you could always count on a few moments of hair raising adventure or suspense. In The Day After Tomorrow, we never care about anything that happens to the characters and when the rampaging weather isn't on the screen the film falls into long stretches of tedious boredom.
With disaster all around them, it's incredible how blasé everyone in this film seems to be. It's just not the Dick Cheney vice presidential look alike, but Quaid's Jack Hall seems to be taking everything in stride also. When he goes off to rescue his son who is in danger of becoming a human Popsicle in New York City, we sit and wait for excitement and some kind of suspense that never develops. Only twice in the whole trip does Hall face any kind of eminent danger and these situations are dispatched with quickly and predictably. Likewise, Hall's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his companions in New York, never strike us as being in any real danger. Although they have one scene where they are being chased by some escaped timber wolves, the rest of their scenes include a lot of talking, some preaching, and a lot of book burning. After all, they have a whole library at their disposal to keep warm with so why not torch a few copies of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann? Unfortunately, burning books adds up to zero in the way of suspense unless your film is title Fahrenheit 451.
Then there's Hall's ex-wife Lucy (Sela Ward) left behind to care for a cancer ridden young boy. We admire her for it, but once again there is no build up of suspense as Emmerich leaves little doubt as to what the outcome of that story or anything else will be. Even when President Blake (Perry King) waits until the last minute to depart the White House, we only hear of his fate, we don't witness it. Wasn't it much more interesting to see the President and The First Lady in Independence Day facing imminent danger? Also, when will the studios learn that when they show all the aces in your hand with trailers and ads before people even get to the theater, those first weekend patrons will be sure to let everyone know 'you saw all the good stuff in the previews.'
So why whitewash everything? The problem with Emmerich and the studios that make a film like The Day After Tomorrow is they are so intent on assuring themselves of nothing worse than their precious PG-13 rating, that for all the disasters taking place, we see little of the actual human toll involved. If all you want to show us are buildings and cities being taken down when millions have lost their lives, do you really expect us to become emotionally involved with your story? As for the PG-13 rating, the studio must have begged for it as there's no reason this film shouldn't be any worse than a PG. It is never frightening, never suspenseful and most of the time a bore with a capital B.
If Emmerich was trying to make a serious film about global warming, then perhaps they should have done away with all the special effects hype and sold the film on a more serious level. It's possible that's what he really had in mind but you can't sell a film on that basis when you're trying to put more fannies in the theater than that green ogre known as Shrek. The problem is, I have to view the film the way it was sold to me. It was sold as a special effects laden disaster film which just happens to use global warming as it's plot device. And when you make a disaster film that does nothing to sustain the goodwill accumulated by some great special effects, has no interesting characters, and zero suspense, I have no choice but to give you my grade which for The Day After Tomorrow is a C-.
Oh yes, one more important thing before I go. Take it from an old Midwestern boy. Someone should tell those L.A. news stations that if for some odd reason a tornado does come floating down Hollywood Boulevard, it's really not a good idea to be playing tag with them while riding in a helicopter.