The Day After Tomorrow Okay But Flawed

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2009)

The Day After Tomorrow is okay but flawed from director Roland Emmerich whose admirable in making this movie about a climatologist who must go to New York to save his son because global warming has caused a large part of the world to be taken over by a new age. The cast are good in their roles including Dennise Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, and Sela Ward but even their talent can hide the flaws that can be found in this film. No offense to Dennis Quaid because he is a good actor and he is the main character in this movie sort of but at least to me I felt his character played second fiddle to the special effects and most of the action sequences. Except for one action sequence early on and then a few near the end Quaid's character sort of takes a back seat in this one and lets the special effects take over for large parts of the movie. Most of the people in the cast kind of do but some of them including Gyllenhaal are in a few action sequences. I thought Gyllenhall had more to do than Quaid who for most of the film is warning ignorant people about the possibility of a new ice age that will change their world forever. The rest of the cast are okay but like Quaid they don't have much to do. The special effects are the big highlight in the movie because they're incredible even though you can tell it's CG but it works none the less. The action sequences are intense but there could have be more of them. The pacing was slow at times and the dialogue wasn't the greatest occasionally either. The only reason why I gave this film five stars is because of the attempt by the actors and the special effects. If it wasn't for those two things I definitely wouldn't have liked this movie. Overall The Day After Tomorrow is a decent sci-fi apocalyptic action drama with an interesting premise, great special effects, some intense action, and good performances by the cast but this movie could have been a lot better.