eh.. worth the dollar theatre price.

Rating: 5/10 (11 July 2004)

*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
after all the rancor and trailers earlier this year, i figured i'd just wait until "the day after tomorrow" hit my area second-run theatre to go see it. being the skeptic of "global warming" that i am, i would never fork over full price to see something touting global warming as the sole cause of a geological cataclysm so powerful it would cause a total climate shift. unless of course it featured something remotely plausible; like a severe nuclear winter.
one of the numerous criticisms/complaints about this production is the way in which it features steaming heaps of leftist propaganda so hokey, it could've been written by bono himself. true, the attitudes portrayed here are stereotypical per their characters' archetypes, and we must resign ourselves early in the story to these stereotypes. also true that several "controversial" scenes do exist; if i can describe one such scene without spoiling it excessively: at one point we see American evacuees (called "refugees" in the story) flooding into Mexico whilst Mexican officials and authorities blockade gates and refuse entrance. a number of fellow patrons shook their heads at this scene, and i found myself thinking, "typical". i daresay this was not the desired effect of the filmmakers, as they were clearly trying to get us to think, "but they're just trying to escape a bad situation!". this concept recurs more towards the end of the film, and the educated viewer is likely only to bristle at the attempt, and discard it from consideration as mindless propaganda. you see, i live in arizona, very near the Mexican border. we accept Mexican "refugees", who are "simply trying to escape a bad situation" on an hourly basis. so when i saw that scene, i didn't have one of those "now i'm in the other pair of shoes and it feels funny in the bad way" reactions. rather, i had the "of course. my country takes them and my country's government even considered giving amnesty to all of them. of course they should refuse us, as that's why their people came here in the first place."
my point is that the film's message is completely lost in its (un?)intentionally offensive and dare i say, slanderous, assault on American leadership, law, and culture. of course, we hear terms arise such as "western civilization". the problem occurs in the entire northern hemisphere, yet there is little to no mention of europeans. whilst "western civilization" is uttered, we see absolutely no adverse phenomenon in -south- America. in the beginning of the film, we see a few seconds of a hail storm in japan, and then we leave japan and hear nothing of it ever again. the extent of the European depiction is limited to three scientists trapped in the united kingdom. nothing more. also omitted from the "global disaster" are china, the entire middle east, all of africa, micronesia, and oddly enough we see absolutely nothing in canada, supposedly hit the hardest by this curiously karmic cataclysm. with so many politics tossed about the dialogue so freely, and with so many major world players completely absent from the consequences of the storms, one cannot help but feel an unmitigated sense of antiamericanism.
personally, i brushed it off as intestinal gas and enjoyed the scene where sam slams the door on the wild wolf. not since "conan the barbarian" have i seen a character so not willing to succumb to the innate cuteness of an uppity animal. bravo, sam.