Special effects 50 million, script 50 cents

Rating: 5/10 (27 February 2005)

50 cents being the going rate for 11 year old script writers in Hollywood.
I'll have to come clean and say that I was gripped. Mainly because a climate change such as this doesn't seem impossible somehow. However, the total is ruined (yet again) by a terrible plot that makes no sense. Now sometimes you can over look certain incongruities. But when the entire film structure depends on them - you can't see around them I afraid.
SPOILERS Yet again we have the rather hackneyed contrasting parallel story lines - the one following the son 'staying put', and the other 'the father on rescue mission'. But putting the banality of this structure aside for one moment - we are led to believe that the father is rather bright. He's the only one to spot what's going on. He knows the storm will last 6 or 7 days - and he knows that to be caught outside is certain death. He tells his son to stay put and inside. Then what does he do? He sets off against the traffic while the storm rages. Duh?! He ends up killing his longtime partner, injuring another - and arrives a little before the helicopters - which if he'd waited back down south - he could have caught a ride with in the first place.
What did he hope to accomplish by making this futile journey? What help would he be when he got there? Either the son was OK - or he wasn't - the eye of the storm didn't last that long remember. It's dumb dumb, dumb. Yes - okay it's a plot mechanism. But these still need to be rational. They need to make sense in the context of the characters as they are told to us.
All that money on effects - and none on substance. Just once - you'd like them to invest in both.