Ridiculous Story, But Fun To Watch

Rating: 8/10 (5 October 2006)

I was leery of a heavy propaganda piece on "global warming," but I still saw this and found that, yeah that's what it was but it was really more of just a straight adventure story than anything else.....and not a bad one, at that. The first 50 minutes of this two-hour film have the "fun parts" where the special-effects dominate. We see all kinds of radical weather disasters that are extremely dramatic and entertaining to watch, even if they don't make a bit of sense.
After the blizzard and sub-zero, unlivable weather conditions arrive the movie settles down to a young romance and survival story with Jake Gyllenhaal, Emily Rossum and other people trapped in a library in New York City and Jake's father, played by Dennis Quaid, walking all the way from Philadelphia to rescue him. Yes, it's very, very far-fetched - the whole thing - but it's a fun adventure story with nice people. It's especially refreshing to see Hollywood portray a father as being so loving and selfless. The romance wasn't overdone and the young people were not profane and/or annoying, as so often is the case.
Except for the over-exaggerated and extremely erroneous scare tactics of this movie, and a ridiculous portrayal of the Vice Preseint of the United States, the movie works strictly as an entertaining fantasy-adventure story.