No Al Gore, but tons of fun.

Rating: 8/10 (14 May 2008)

My Take: Suspend your disbelief and enjoy the thrill-ride.
Armed once again with a big budget and a cookie-cutter disaster movie of a script, director Roland Emmerich is ready to make another big-budgeted disaster epic this side of GODZILLA. Too bad the writers didn't consult Al Gore before writing their weather-gone-bad disaster epic called THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, but even if its as silly as a guilty pleasure 70's disaster movie, it's still a lot of fun with some really neat special effects and fine action scenes. Sometimes you just have that hankering for a massive disaster movie, and I think other than the late Irwin Allen, no one does it like Roland Emmerich.
The film is Emmerich's signaling of the overwhelming Global Warming issue, but it's sometimes silly, it can't quite be anymore than a summer movie. But then again, what summer movie is complete without a a little pseudo-science? The manner that the film doesn't want to be too deep makes it more enjoyable and makes us simple accept it as a popcorn summer flick. With that, its fairly enjoyable. Besides, the sight of tornadoes ripping Los Angeles apart (not sparing the Hollywood sign), a tidal wave ravage New York City (what Roland Emmerich film wouldn't), a quick freeze that makes icicles out of those it touches and falling hale the size of footballs is more than enough to see it as, simply, a summer movie with incredible sights.
Dennis Quaid stars as a meteorologist Jack Hall who, like in all disaster movies, is the guy who predicts the danger. While doing an experiment in the polar regions, he discovers that all the ice is melting due to cause of Global Warming (but the dangers that follow can almost be enough to be called "Global Freezing"). Of course, there's the guy who doubts his paranoid delusions, and that man happens to be the Vice-President (Kenneth Walsh) who believes Jack's precautions could cost a million dollars of expense.
When the calamity does arrive, as far as we know, Jack must make his way through bad weather to save his son (Jake Gyllenhaal), who goes to New York with his decathlon crew, while his wife (Sela Ward) waits haplessly with a cancer patient in a hospital waiting for rescue. Special effects abound for most of the running time. When Jack isn't being periled by a blizzard of flash freeze, his son in New York is being chased by savage wolves gone mad.
At least THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW doesn't try to be anything else. It's fun for what it is: a throwback to the 70's disaster movie the likes of Irwin Allen. It's silly (cliches abound), but granted it's fun in its own merit. The special effects are great and enjoyable.
Rating: **** out of 5.