Don't rely on this for your scientific knowledge...

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2004)

The basic plot is this: due to global warming, the world faces an ice age, and the scientist who predicted this has to rescue his son before the poor boy freezes to death.
If you excuse the hokey science, this film is entertaining and enjoyable. If you take the science seriously, you're going to be scared out of your wits for no good reason.
As disaster movies go, this one is up there; unlike most other disaster movies (such as "The Core" and "Volcano"), the main characters are not killed off one by one. One thing disaster movies seem to love is extending the movie half an hour by giving central characters lingering, painful death (e.g. "Brazz" from "The Core"). "The Day After Tomorrow" avoids this, and though for some minor characters, death is implied, it is not shown (to the viewer's relief).
One thing about the "global warming" issue: at one point, several teenagers visit the American Museum of Natural History ("The world's biggest collection of stuffed animals," quips one boy). A young man points out the stuffed remains of a mammoth, saying that it was found with food in its mouth and stomach, proving that it was frozen while grazing. During the movie, super-storms with the ability to freeze people instantly are shown frequently. If these storms are caused by the melting of the ice caps, and the melting of the ice caps are caused by global warming, which, in turn, is caused by pollution in the atmospher... how did the mammoth freeze? That may sound ridiculous, but think about it: it is implied that the mammoth is frozen by one of these storms. But if there are no humans to pollute the atmosphere, how could that storm have been formed in the first place? All in all, the movie exaggerates greatly the dangers of global warming, creating a hokey (but enjoyable) film.