A film that makes me long for the great disaster films of Irwin Allen

Rating: 3/10 (8 June 2004)

It's sad enough when a grown woman goes to see a film with the fallback plan of having Jake Gyllenhaal as eye candy in case the movie sucks. It's even sadder when she soon realizes that A) He plays a high school student in said film, and B) That even the eye candy can't make up for the fact that the movie really does suck  badly. That was the situation I found myself in after seeing `The Day After Tomorrow'.
The only saving grace for this film (besides the aforementioned eye candy) was some pretty impressive special effects. Unfortunately, there was about another hour and a half of celluloid to account for, which was comprised of ridiculous plot points, horrendous dialogue, (somehow I don't think I was supposed to laugh out loud when the rich kid tells Gyllenhaal, `Tell her how you feel' seemingly out of the blue) and some really, really lame timber wolves. The resurfacing of the (completely ineffectual) wolves marks the end of any hope that this movie even deserves one and a half stars. Unfortunately, there's another half hour to go from there.
Some needs to tell Roland Emmerich `Hang it up son'. Like `Independence Day', the special effects were good, but also like ID4, a nearly two hour film cannot revolve around about ten minutes of destruction sequences, and `The Day After Tomorrow' tries this, leaving me as cold as that frost monster that Jake & Co. evaded by simply shutting a door. `The Day After Tomorrow' is not worth seeing unless you're into some hard-core boredom with a few cool digital effects. The only thing the film really left me with was regret  regret that I had waited in line to see this film and regret that the Fox News reporter that was mowed down by the flying debris in Los Angeles wasn't Bill O'Reilly. I did learn something, however  I learned that if another Ice Age occurs, apparently the only satellite channel that will work will be The Weather Channel, so I thank you, `The Day After Tomorrow', kind of I guess.
--Shelly