The Day After Tomorrow Review

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home > arts&culture > The Day After Tomorrow Review

May 26, 2004 7:07 PM
by [email]

Ask yourself this... Are you the type of person who can suspend disbelief and cynicism for a couple of hours and just get lost in a movie? Did you enjoy Indpendence Day and Armageddon? If that's a yes then The Day After Tomorrow is a movie you'll get a kick out of.

I've always been a fan of disaster movies, from the classics of the 70's like Airport, Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure (please don't remake it), to more recent stuff like the meteor movies a few years ago and even (shudder) completely tongue in cheek stuff like The Core.

The Day After Tomorrow proudly accepts the baton and carries forward the disaster genre into even more impressive territory, as the US gets ass-whipped by mother nature in true revenge-flick fashion.

The plot is fairly academic, although director Roland Emmerich does try to explain the science behind the premise, namely that the Gulf Stream which keeps the northern hemisphere warm and pleasant ceases to be, with cataclysmic results.

You've probably seen the trailer and have a taste for the effects, and the CGI is definitely the star of the flick. Emmerich's tornadoes make Twister look like a light breeze, and the destructive scenes as well as vistas of an ice age New York are visually stunning.

Jake Gylenhall and Dennis Quaid do a decent job of playing equally heroic father and son, although several of the supporting characters are wafer thin. But hey, there always have to be obvious victims in disaster movies right?

What was very unique, and a reflection of the times we live in, was the portrayal of the US President as a bumbling media hungry fool, and the Vice President as a stubborn, change fearing conservative.

Usually in these movies (see ID4) the President is a rock that the country can feel assured by, but the message that the government is refusing to acknowledge the effect we can have on the environment is not one that can easily be missed by viewers.

So all in all this is a great popcorn flick. It's never going to be heralded as a modern classic, but it's well worth the ticket price for the effects alone. Make sure you catch it on the big screen.

By Crystal on July 8, 2008 12:12 PM

its that movie true

By Missie on July 8, 2008 12:10 PM

i love that movie

By Missie on July 8, 2008 12:10 PM

that was a great movie i loved it