a gleefully terrible film

Rating: 5/10 (4 June 2004)

Global warming is bad. Now, having dispensed with my socially-dictated conscience as a film critic, I can move on to the review of "The Day After Tomorrow."
Wow, this is such a gleefully terrible film. It's "the formula" applied to the end of the world, the arrival of Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere (the Southern Hemisphere is spared). It's a disaster film, pure and simple, intertwining cheesy and cliched human stories with improbable destruction that separates the heroes from the cowards, that brings together fathers and sons, and so on and so forth.
It also has Americans illegally crossing the border into Mexico to escape the catastrophic natural destruction. It has L.A. destroyed in a cheerful series of tornadoes that rip apart the "Hollywood" sign and the "Capitol Records" building. Millions of people die. It has the American president forgive Latin American debt so that the Mexican government allows American refugees to stay there. It features (this only gets better) the American President apologize to the world, on the WEATHER CHANNEL, for mistakes in his judgment. Loving it yet? Well, there's more. In one, particularly striking scene a survivor of the destruction of New York chats with a girl about why he doesn't want to contribute an old edition of the Guttenberg Bible to the fire that keeps the survivors warm. It's an article, an artifact, a testament to the achievements of the Western Civilization. He has to bring it back.
Europe is destroyed, the Northern States and Canada are destroyed. The man talks about the twilight of the Western Civilization, but the Southern United States is just fine. Who knows what kind of (if any) civilization lurks below the Mason-Dixon Line?
So yes, the film has spectacular moments. Does it bring awareness to the cause of so many serious environmentalists and the very real problem of global warming? I don't think so, though I do not doubt that many people who see this movie will encounter the problem for the first time in precisely this disaster-film form. Though, for people aware of the dangers of global warming, this is more like a mockery, but a light-hearted one. It's absolutely nonsensical, features scenes of great destruction, though not enough plot - in other words, it's yet another blockbuster picture. It's got a cast of great actors, whose performances aren't particularly great because there's no room for performances in this film. But there is room from running away at top-speed from vicious and viciously hungry CGI-generated wolves as the temperature drops 10F per second. And the characters do that remarkably well - so you can't help but like them.
So the destruction of the Western Civilization (namely Europe, Canada, and the Northern United States) gets a ridiculous portrayal in a disaster film not above other disaster films (with the exception of "Armageddon" - Ben Affleck was a huge detriment to that film), nor below them. Right on par. With many hilarious, politically correct scenes that mock their own political correctness. "The Day After Tomorrow" is a film you see with no expectations - otherwise you're wasting your time.