The Day After Tomorrow: 7/10

Rating: 7/10 (31 May 2004)

Summer releases released in May usually don't sustain for the whole summer. Take a look at last year's examples, like The Matrix Reloaded. A month after its release you could barely find it anywhere. That might happen to The Day After Tomorrow, but it's better than those mediocre action movies we got last year. The previews for The Day After Tomorrow made the movie out to be a movie with spectacular special effects and a decent story to tie it all together. For once, the trailers tell the truth.
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a paleoclimatologist (what a distinguished job!) who predicts that major weather changes will occur in 100 to 1000 years. No one believes him (of course!), but soon afterwards, the climate does start to change. The oceans flood, causing distress in much of the northern hemisphere, including Jack's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who's currently in New York, waiting out the storm in a library. Jack decides to go from Washington, D.C. to New York to get his son.
The special effects were more than what they looked on that stupid 10 minute preview on Fox. They were amazing. The special effects-and the effects that it had on the citizens of New York-looked very real. It brought that fact that this global warming could occur to us at anytime. Director Roland Emmerich can really use these special effects at the perfect time for the best effect. They are some of the most realistic effects I have ever seen in movies.
Usually in movies like this, there's a seesaw effect. The better the effects, the worse the script. Amazingly enough, Tomorrow's script wasn't half bad. Although it did have the typically cheesy dialogue ("He's a straight-A student, he doesn't fail classes!"), the amount of characters generally stays small, and it doesn't blow the movie out of proportion. A few humorous characters are thrown in, and the script's representations of the President and Vice-President (dead-on characterizations of our current ones) are very funny. The script does go for pathos and stereotypes a little, though. Jack's wife Lucy (Sela Ward) is a doctor caring for a boy with cancer when the storm happens, so we are supposed to feel bad for the boy. When we see the effects in Japan, all we see are drunk Japanese businessmen. The worst, though, is what made me not watch the rest of the second season of 24. Wolves escape from a zoo and end up on a Russian ship in New York where Sam and co. go to look for supplies. If that isn't stupid, I don't know what is. One last thing I didn't like about the script: there was no sense of time. Scenes took place right after each other with no way of telling how much time had taken place in between.
It's no wonder why The Alamo failed at the box office. Because of Dennis Quaid. He comes off of his best work in The Rookie to do The Alamo, Cold Creek Manor, and Tomorrow. He just doesn't seem to work here. While watching Gyllenhaal, I realized how much I was looking forward to the re-release of Donnie Darko this summer, so I could see him in a movie where he acted well. But I put this all beside me as I was being constantly entertained at The Day After Tomorrow, probably the only good action movie of this summer.
My rating: 7/10
Rated PG-13 for intense situations of peril.