Slavishly follows the standard disaster movie template

Rating: 4/10 (28 October 2005)

Dennis Quaid stars as climatologist Jack Hall, who predicts that the world is heading for a new ice age due to global warming, but nobody listens. However, extreme weather systems soon start erupting all over the planet.
The recent hurricane season in America has made some of the severe weather in this film seem slightly less far-fetched, but this is still a ridiculous film, which subjugates science to the needs of a fast-paced action movie. Although this is understandable, using global warming as the basis for entertainment seems somewhat misguided.
As with many disaster movies the characterisation in The Day After Tomorrow is wafer-thin. The film might have benefited from ditching it and concentrating on the action, which at least provides some excitement, despite some fairly average special effects. As in Deep Impact, sentimentality substitutes for meaningful characterisation. This explains the focus on Jack's son and the fact that his wife works in a hospital with sick children.
The film is hampered by having too many sub-plots, one of which involves Ian Holm heading up a group of stereotypical Brits who send some data to the Americans. The over-abundance of sub-plots means that they become squeezed, with none given enough space to develop. Deep Impact at least had Morgan Freeman's impressive performance as the President, but here the President is almost anonymous, and only makes a few very brief appearances.
The Day After Tomorrow is a lacklustre film, which slavishly follows the standard disaster movie template. It was never going to be a classic, but the piecemeal characterisation makes it very hard to care about the fate of the characters. Without the ability to generate empathy the film loses any tension it might otherwise have had.