Wretched excess.

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2005)

In movies like "Twister" you only get one real disaster, although admittedly it's a doozie. In movies like "Earthquake" you can get several disasters for the price of one -- the ground shakes, dams burst and cause floods, there may be a fire. In movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" you get no end of disasters, and you flirt with the end of the world too.
Let me see. Floods. Tsunamis. Cold snaps beyond belief. Tornadoes. (No fires.) A sick child threatened with abandonment. A sick adult who needs medicine that can only be found in a super dangerous place. A gigantic crevasse in the ice into which men and machines fall. (This will have to do in lieu of an earthquake.) Hurricanes. Blizzards. Airplane crashes. The doomed team having a final drink of twelve-year old scotch. A middle-aged man hiking in snowshoes from Washington to New York hauling a sled, in order to be with his trapped son because "I promised him." Other things of similar ilk.
I didn't mind so much seeing LA get it. Nothing against the Capitol Records Building (which takes off in a tornado like a stack of frisbees). It's just knowing that the storm is taking along with it several dozen Taj Mahal Motels painted day-glo purple. And the "Hollywood" sign, which, to borrow a phrase, looks like "an explosion in a shingle factory." On the other hand it was tragic to see New York first inundated by seawater and then frozen solid. The notion of patrons in The White Horse Tavern frozen stiff while still hunched over their chessboards brought tears to my eyes. And the frosty statues in Julius's, immobilized during a sip of a martini, pinkies still pointed upward.
Actually, the special effects are very good. The flood in New York is naturally much better than George Pal's justly celebrated earlier version. And there's something appealing about scenes in which people creep about on deserted ships.
That, by the way, reminds me of the one big surprise in the movie. Hundreds of people are trapped by the flood on the upper stories of the New York Public Library, shouting at one another, and suddenly everyone goes quiet. A very low rumble is heard from the avenue outside. People rush to the windows and what we see is shocking -- the prow of a huge Russian tanker proceeding uptown with slow majesty.
I guess, from reading the "trivia" entries, that the director was serious in his concern about global warming -- as he should be. The movie doesn't really convey that anxiety. I know a little about climatology but the explanation got passed me. (Maybe the book made more sense.) As it is, the science we hear is very sketchy and given by fiat. (Why does atmospheric subsidence over the Canadian north bring with it storm and snow instead of stability and low temperatures?) Because Dennis Quaid's model says it does? Anyway, I was lost.
The last ice ages left us with our immediate hominid ancestors ("Cro-Magnon"), woolly mammoths, and who knows what else? This one seems to leave us in thrall to tropical third-world countries, which should make for an interesting sequel.
I enjoyed the movie's visuals. (It's impossible to comment on the acting.) What's worrisome is that global warming -- despite a multitude of attempt to muddy the scientific waters -- is now pretty much universally accepted by investigators without vested interests. "The Day After Tomorrow" turns it into an excuse for just another expensive disaster flick.
It's worth watching though. That Russian ship groaning past the Public Library is a gem.