Return of the Disaster Movie

Rating: 7/10 (1 June 2004)

This should have been christened "the disaster movie after so many years" for its brave attempt at rekindling the fiery storm that gave birth to so many of its ilk back in the second half of the Nineties. Remember Dante's Peak, Volcano, Twister and The Perfect Storm? Well, maybe not. Perhaps your recollection is hindered by echoes of Deep Impact and Armaggedon. But definitely consider making room for The Day After Tomorrow, which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the 1983 Cold War epic, in case you were wondering. Nope, this one goes on the assumption that every imaginable climactic calamity could somehow transpire concurrently with its devilish counterparts, engulfing mother earth in an almost instantaneous natural debacle of biblical proportions. Of course, it's all humanity's fault for being so reckless with our misuse of the planet's resources, and for shopping at The Gap. Fortunately, this flick keeps its political agenda-making to a minimum, since Emmerich was probably more occupied with paying proper homage to classics like Meteor (1979) than ameliorating the green party circuit. And props were nicely given, thank you, as TDAT follows Meteor's example by touching on the same locations more or less, namely Tokyo, Los Angeles, and New york (where most of the action goes down). Despite having a budget to rival that of many small nations, the movie doesn't quite feel huge as expected. Its effects get the job done effortlessly, but do not represent the phenomenal leap forward many were anticipating. Most of what we get to see has already been rendered to some extent in the past. However, TDAT stands out from the mushy, kitch-driven posse by being, well, not as mushily kitch-driven. Sure, there's some patriotic pandering, but not enough to make one squirm uncomfortably in their stadium seats. And the leading cast all do their respective roles believably enough, with Dennis Quaid as climatologist Jack Hall, whose warnings of an impending global breakdown in weather patterns falls on deaf political ears until it's all too late. When hail bigger than your average Whopper descends on Tokyo, and flash tornadoes "dismantle" Los Angeles (to quote the hilarious press material we saw online prior to the film's release), everybody more or less gets the picture. What follows looks a lot like Emmerich's superb Godzilla remake, yet has little of its charm and sardonic humor. We get the same healthy dose of widespread, PG-13 havoc, where you're supposed to know scores of people are meeting a grisly collective demise, but hardly ever get to see them buying it in any vivid sense of the expression. As long as one understands what they're getting into, this amounts to no problem at all. Back to the story, Hall must hike it to New York to find his son (Jake Gyllenhaall, from October Sky and Donnie Darko), a laid-back kid infatuated with pretty classmate Laura (Emmy Rossum), and stranded in the NYC public library with a group of courageous, shake 'n' bake survivalists. If this hints at how it would take a new ice age to make people pick up a book, we certainly didn't get it. Beyond the main thread of select, inventive individuals toughing it out we witness a scant few other plot lines. Ian Holm pops in to do Hall's temporary mentor, and Riptide's excellent Perry Kind returns to the big screen momentarily as President Baker, whose chopper promptly falls to the colossal storm in a nod to Indpendence Day. Most disarmingly, Sela Ward does Miss Hall, a pale character the movie could have done equally well were it bereft of her Left Behind Good Samaritan cliché. What's so cool about The Day After Tomorrow is that nobody expects the audience to really take it seriously, but at the same time it's far from preposterous. All in all, Emmerich and crew's competence shows through in most departments, a walk in the park for them in light of so much experience handling these monumental end-of-the-world projects. While some in the screening we attended muttered "where's the comet in all of this?", rest assured TDAT poses no risk of boredom or frustration. Certainly at times it trespasses, like when coverage of a blizzard in Scotland blatantly uses footage shot in Minnesota, or with the brave New York nouveau-librarians scrounging for supplies on a Russian ship that somehow made its way to their doorstep along flooded Manhattan streets, but overall the film remains a solid, entertaining product. As a bonafide examination of current ecological topics, The Day After Tomorrow leaves much to be desired. As prelude to what seems to be building toward a summer science fiction renaissance, it earns the cover price with great dignity.