A solid, entertaining disaster movie

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2004)

The Day After Tomorrow is a workmanlike disaster movie that takes its premise seriously but not so much so that it fails as the light entertainment it is meant to be. DAT doesn't so much avoid the cliches of the genre as uses them intelligently. Director Roland Emmerich captures the good, old fashioned fun of cinematic catastrophe while avoiding the melodramatics that mar movies like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure.
The movie opens with a large chunk of the Antarctic ice cap falling into the ocean. Scientist Jack Hall witnesses the event and, with the help of a computer model designed to study ancient weather patterns, predicts that global warming is going to cause a new ice age. In fact it soon becomes clear that the climate reversals that Hall thought would take a century or more are occurring at a vastly accelerated rate. Within days the Northern Hemisphere is beset by biblical disasters and glaciers begin galloping southward. It is at this point Hall heads off for frozen New York to save his estranged son. Critics have sneered at this, citing ersatz family drama as a disaster movie cliche. The critics would have been right if situations like these were used for campy histrionics. Instead DAT makes a smart choice. Rather than have the cast emote frantically the movie leaves the theatrics to the CGI technicians. As a result the quiet tragedies the characters face stand out in relief against the cacophony of disaster that surrounds them.
Dennis Quaid shines as Hall, the heroic scientist and absentee father. His intensity and utter seriousness keep the role from being consumed by its own cliches. Ian Holm is his usual memorable self as a doomed Scottish meteorologist and Kenneth Welsh gives his wrong headed US Vice President more depth than called for. Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum are fine as the endangered son and his love interest. Together they avoid what could have been sappy pitfalls and managed to inject a little humor into their predicament.
DAT fulfills its apocalyptic premise by giving you all manner of spectacular destruction. Tornados, blizzards and tidal waves rip across the screen with all the wild abandon one could wish for. Is it all convincingly real? Nope. Not at all. In DAT they have to ravish the whole Northern Hemisphere on essentially the same budget that powered just one hurricane in Twister. Exacting realism just isn't in the cards. So, instead of quality, the movie goes for imaginative quantity. You are treated to the sight of three twisters tearing the heart out of Los Angeles, a wall of water cleansing the dirty streets of New York, a tanker floating down Broadway and the Statue of Liberty waist deep in a snow drift.
The Day After Tomorrow has become a lighting rod for undeserved criticism, most of it lambasting it for having the audacity to be a disaster movie. This is something like cursing the sky for being blue. So be warned, if you don't like disaster flicks DAT won't change your mind. You might even think twice about spending eight dollars to see it. But it is worth matinee prices to experience the spectacle on a wide screen. If it sounds like I'm damning this movie with faint praise I'm really not. DAD is an enjoyable movie that does its job well. If disaster is what you are in the mood for you cannot go wrong, just don't expect it to shatter your senses.