Shallow Impact

Rating: 5/10 (11 October 2004)

*contains what some may consider minor spoilers*
I watched this on election night in Australia. A disaster movie seemed like a good idea.
Actually I'm kind of fond of good disaster movies. Lived through the original craze as a kid, starting with 'Poseidon Adventure'. You learn not to expect anything profound - just some well done, big-scope action/adventure fun in a well-done example. Such an example of the more modern variety was 'Deep Impact', which was followed by a parade of increasingly more tedious clones, right down to the utterly awful 'Tychus'.
Whereas 'Day After Tomorrow' isn't that bad, it's no 'Deep Impact', either. Maybe it's the subject matter. Having run out of disasters to have disaster movies about, the makers of 'Independence Day' turn to Global Warming. Only trouble is, this is a cataclysm which takes place over decades, or maybe centuries, so they speed it all up into a few weeks. Unfortunately not even this is enough to obscure the fact that, in disaster movie terms, watching things get frosted over really quickly isn't exactly jaw-dropping.
The first 45 minutes or so are fairly strong. The appropriate sense of awe, as in 'something awful is coming', with scientists trying to convince skeptical politicians (including a VP who looks far too much like Dick Cheney to be coincidence), and people saying "Oh my God" in hushed voices a lot. You've seen the same thing in 'The Towering Inferno', 'Deep Impact', 'The Arrival', perhaps even 'Contact'. It's what happens when the action part of the film eventually gets under way that lets everything down.
A tidal wave hits New York (this isn't a spoiler, since it says so on the back cover). The thing is, there is zero build-up to this, nobody says "Oh, my God, a tidal wave is going to hit New York" in hushed tones; and when it does arrive, frankly it's rather sluggish-looking. Even the tornadoes in LA are sort of blown off (if you'll excuse the expression) without summoning what should have been the appropriate amount of awe and dread.
What really kills the thing though is having Dennis Quaid trudge for ages across the snow while his son sits about in a library in Manhattan. There's nothing really wrong with the film moving into this phase. Every disaster movie has its narrow-focus human story part, after the macro-focus cataclysmic event part. It's just that whereas in say, 'Poseidon Adventure', this part was genuinely exciting, in 'Day After Tomorrow', it's genuinely dull.
Unlike some disaster movies, this one isn't a disaster itself, but it fails to deliver much beyond the opening sense of awe.
Not quite 6 out of 10.