Great FX but big flaws insulting the intelligence!

Rating: 2/10 (12 December 2006)

The music during the opening credits is beautiful and the movie is full of great CGI, but sadly that is all you can enjoy. Unfortunately, there are so many flaws in the film from start to end that make it very implausible.
1) Three scientists appeared working in Antarctica and they had an accident with an ice crack. One of them is stupid enough to jump 2 times crossing the crack just to get some stuff. It is impossible to walk on ice without hooks on your feet, and even more impossible to jump!
2) Dennis Quaid, the main character, predicts a kind of ice age during a global warming conference. It is too much coincidence that this "cooling" happens one day after.
3) The weather changes are all over the north, but all you can see about north is some places in US and a storm in Tokyo, nothing else. What about the rest of Asia, Europe and Canada!
4) Dennis Quaid and his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) have an estranged relationship but this is not plausible. There is no character development. Jake Gyllenhaal is in love with his mate Emmy Rossum, but there is not one bit of emotion in their eyes, nothing.
5) During tornadoes in L.A., and during all the movie, people prefer to stare at the sky than to run and hide. There is a chopper flying over there! Helicopters cannot fly in those conditions!
6) In this movie the vice president is more powerful than the president himself! The president almost does not exist.
7) The young guys go to stay in a penthouse. Suddenly one of them wants to go and pick up his brother. ALL of them leave the penthouse. Why all of them? Then when the girl says "Maybe we should just stay here" Jake Gyllenhall answers "No. We need to get home"... HOME? I thought they were going to pick up the guy's brother!
8) There is a kind of zoo scene. What kind of zoo is that where wolves can destroy the cages and escape?
9) The cop needs a translator to save people who are trapped inside a car? No kidding!
10) Laura was getting a bag for the French woman and the tsunami was going to beat. How brave was Jake Gyllenhall for running and telling Laura "Hurry up!". He saved her life! Give me a break.
11) Cell phones do not work but the pay phones underwater do?
12) Jake Gyllenhall and the girl went to use the pay phone. He stays under water several seconds. The girl just waits for him to come back. If you were there you would probably dive and go for him!
13) The girl finds a big wardrobe with many dry clothes. How can she find that place so quickly and in a library???
14) In the library most people decide to go out and walk. The policeman encourages everybody to go out. It is OBVIOUS everybody will get frozen outside and where do they go walking?
15) The people who stay in the library go to a fireplace to burn books and get warm... This is crazy! OK... Paper is combustible, but not a good one! Paper only works to start the fire but not to keep it! In a library there are many chairs, tables and bookshelves, lots of furniture made in wood, and still they prefer to burn books! These guys are supposed to be intelligent.
16) This enormous library has just a lounge room for employees but not cafeteria? Can you believe that? They only have a couple of vending machines. They have a Gutenberg bible but not a cafeteria?
17) More about intelligent nerds! The girl cut a leg very bad and she does not pay attention to that. She knows how to take care of her mate's body temperature but she just forgets her own hurt leg?
18) They burn books to stay warm in the library. What about the smoke and oxygen? They stay in a place with all windows closed! How can they breath there? Writers forgot that fire consumes oxygen too? The chimney is blocked with tons of snow. Where does the smoke go?
19) Dennis Quaid WALKS from Philadelphia to Manhattan in record time, in the middle of a snowstorm with two co-workers. There is a risk scene about a rope, that is clearly taken from another movie: Vertical Limit. But here the scene is very unrealistic. They are walking on a glass roof, the sled crashed the glass and the 3 people start falling, then Dennis Quaid sticks a pick in the snow and stops the fall, but the pick does not crash the glass!
20) When the guys discovered the girl has a cut and she is in shock, they diagnosed her health status and everything reading a book! Anyone can be a doctor!
21) Why do these guys are so sure that there are medicines in the ship? And how do they find them so quickly?
22) At the end Dennis Quaid character finally made it. But if you think for a while... what was the point of this? Just to keep his promise?
23) Finally, it seems the storm has gone, but what about all the massive floods you are supposed to expect once the sun melt all those tons of snow?
All in all, it was entertaining but writers DO have to learn a little more before writing.