Mother Nature gone awry!

Rating: 7/10 (26 May 2004)

The Day After Tomorrow explores the possibility of the world's weather going absolutely mad due to global warming. Cataclysmic events from tornadoes in Los Angeles to New York City freezing over. All of these events and a lot more in the hands of Independence Day and The Patriot director Roland Emmerich.
Dennis Quaid is Jack Hall, a climatologist who predicts dire consequences as a result of global warming leads the cast. At first only a few people believe him but as events he predicted slowly become reality many rue that they ignored his calls for action. Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Moonlight Mile) as Hall's son Sam who is trapped in New York after an academic competition, Sela Ward (Once and Again) as Hall's wife Lucy and Ian Holm (Lord of the Rings) as fellow climatologist Terry Rapson.
Well there has been a lot of news about this movie in the last few weeks leading up to it's opening. You know all this talk of politics, the Third World, the Kyoto Protocol, and other related issues. The whole Left Wing movie issue. Well I'm going to make it clear right here, that I would try my best to limit commenting on such issues, especially on whether or not any of this can actually happen.
The primary thing that really attracted me to this film was the special effects as shown in the trailers. That great shot of a frozen New York was absolutely breathtaking. I got to say the effects were really great! What can you really expect they did spent millions of dollars just to make events as realistic as possible? Most of the effects in the scenes were well done and the level of detail in them was great.
I however found the plot line rather lacking in substance. It was quite shallow to be honest. Placed in there so that they can put in a human element in all this destruction. In movies such as this, the director would try to let you feel pity for the characters in the story. In this aspect I felt the movie failed and that perhaps it could have been done better. There were the occasional humorous moments but it felt a little out of place. The ending also was quite a letdown rather anticlimactic in fact. It just felt lacking and that things happened way too fast. Perhaps another 20-25 minutes should have been added.
In terms of the performances by the actors, I felt that they never really had the opportunity to show the level of their acting. In a way the effects eclipsed all of the characters.
No doubt the effects of this film were really great and perhaps is the main strength of the film. I just had hoped that the storyline would have been better crafted so that instead of the effects taking center stage than it would be mankind's bravery, determination generosity and that would.