It's a happy to be B-movie that wraps you up in warm CGI blankets on the coldest day imaginable

Rating: 7/10 (13 June 2004)

Rolland Emmerich must really have something for New York. I think it's great that he finds an inspiration in the city to have it be the setting for just about every disaster imaginable. Slimy aliens kicked Liberty's ass in "Independence Day," a ferocious lizard ate the big apple in "Godzilla" and now Mother Nature herself has turned a cold shoulder to one of America's most recognizable cities. Is Emmerich intentionally trying to remind us of 9/11, or does he hold a reserve that New Yorkers are really so tough they can take anything?
Whatever the answer there's still no mercy in a movie like this. The trailers and TV spots alone let us know that walls of water will somehow come crashing through Manhattan and monster snow storms will bury Central Park in flash-freezes that haven't occurred since the last ice age. Dr. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is the paleoclimatologist tracking the Arctic ice shelf when he realizes something strange is happening to the planet's climate. He theorizes that life on earth is about to become radically different and spends the first half of the film trying to convince the White House that big things are in our forecast.
Since the average audience aren't willing to wait the decades it would actually take to have an ice age occur on a scale like this we have to believe it can occur in a matter of days. While trying to smooth over a rocky marriage Quaid's character calculates that little time is left before the super storms begin to hit. He urges his college-bound son Sam (Jake Gyllenhal) to seek shelter in New York and wait for him.
The special effects in this film are astounding and it's somewhat refreshing to have them not just look like good CGI, but to feel and sound like it too.
As Quaid's character makes an unlikely jaunt from DC to New York with his arctic gear conveniently available his son makes preparations in the New York library with some other survivors. As is always the case there's not much else to the plot than survival tactics. Characters come into conflict with each other when they can't agree on the best course of action, not because their natures just don't compare. Maybe that would make it slightly more interesting or complicated, but I kept wanting a little more to ponder than just the spectacular effects.
Disaster movies can bring a certain inspiration to them if done correctly, I think "Deep Impact" was the best recently. You can still have fun if they're just adrenaline fodder like "Armageddon". And sometimes they can be just plain ridiculous like "Twister". One thing they all require though is at least one thrilling sequence that makes us feel the crunch of time, the ferocity of the elements and the panic of the characters -- of which there's no real shortage in this film. It's a B movie that knows it's a B movie, and at least that makes us accept it and not feel like it wants to be anything else.