it's a disaster, all right

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2004)

"The Day After Tomorrow" is (drum roll please) a disaster movie! For those of you who aren't familiar with this genre, what this means is that lots of big man-made objects (buildings, ships, planes, etc.) get blown up/knocked over/washed away/sunk, or whatever. That's what you should expect in a movie of this type, and sure enough, this one delivers the goods. But if you're looking for plausibility, or character development, look elsewhere.
To be sure, the overall plot device (the near-instantaneous global warming) is ridiculous in the extreme; but hey, sometimes you have to suspend belief to make a movie work. (Besides, it's not all that more implausible than an experienced ocean-liner captain turning his ship broadside to a tidal wave, a la "Poseidon Adventure"!) But given the means the film makers chose to kick-start the action, couldn't they have at least made some of the details more believable? I'll give one example: as the water ominously rises out of the subways, sewers, and storm drains of New York (all of which are underground passages not famous for their hygienic cleanliness), what is the reaction from you, the audience member? (1) "Oh no, doom is at hand! They're all about to die! Run for your lives, people!" Or, (2), "Look how astonishingly CLEAN the water is! Why, it's practically transparent!" If you picked No. 2, then you'll feel right at home with this film. It's no wonder all those blase New Yorkers just mosey on down the sidewalk as the city slowly sinks beneath them; why flee in terror when you've got a great new swimming pool right there on Fifth Avenue?
Speaking of that (fleeing in terror), this film really dropped the ball on that part. Every fan of disaster movies knows that the evacuation scenes can be some of the most gripping of all. (Personally, I think the scene near the end of "Deep Impact", when the desperate evacuees take over both sides of the interstate plus the median strip, was probably the most intensely realistic evacuation scene yet put to film.) Here in "TDAT" we have probably the largest mass evacuation in human history. An entire movie could have been made just on that one aspect alone! But instead, all we get is a quickie shot of people flooding the Mexican border crossings. What a letdown!
If you like story-line implausibility, and one-dimensional characters played by decent actors trying to put some feeling into their cardboard dialogue, and (most of all) lots of stuff getting destroyed in spectacular, eye-popping fashion, then this is the movie for you.