Movie Review:

The Day After Tomorrow

Hunky Jake Gyllenhaal treading water and escaping CGI wolves? I’m there!

The actor told us that he wished every day was tomorrow while filming the long, very wet and cold destruction scenes in the environmental disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow.

Here’s the scoop. Dr. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a paleo-climatologist who has been studying ancient weather patterns. He’s got a theory about global warming that, in typical disaster movie storytelling, almost nobody believes. His work has led him to neglect his family, son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Dr. wife Lucy (Sela Ward). When Jake and the object of his hot gazes Laura (Emmy Rossum) go to New York to compete in a scholastic decathlon, all environmental heck breaks loose.

Hail the size of really big baseballs falls in Tokyo, tornadoes semi-destroy L.A., the water temps change, oceans rise and New York is flooded then frozen over. Jake, Laura and pals hole up in the big Metropolitan library and start burning books to stay warm. Hoping to redeem himself for ignoring his son for so long, Jack straps on snowshoes and starts walking to New York to... uh, not sure what... die with his kid? Meanwhile, hoards of frightened, frostbitten Americans try to cross into Mexico in a wild reversal of the border crossing immigrant problem. Finally, Mankind does survive the new Ice Age.

This film is awesome to look at. Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) is great at overwhelming us with destruction visuals that really kick it! Jake, as Sam, comes off fine playing younger as a bright high school kid trying to cope with the unimaginable while attempting to kindle a romance with cute Emmy Rossum. What doesn’t flow nicely like the ocean that engulfs New York, is the corny, 1970’s disaster movie dialogue and the equally corny t.v. movie sidestory of Sam’s doctor mom (Sela Ward) trying to protect a cancer kid from being left behind while the North America is freezing over. Every word the talented actress says is ultra-predictable and the story goes nowhere. It’s also silly for dad Jack to trek to New York to reconcile with his kid. It isn’t clear that he will be able to do anything to help Jake’s situation once he gets there so there’s no real urgency placed on his journey.

What is well worth the ticket price is the message that this film lays on thickly. We’d better stop messing up our world or get out the parkas… not quite as quickly as the film would indicate but it is starting to happen! So get the ‘rents to buy a hybrid car and start conserving and recycling wherever you can! I also loved the hilarious reverse-political situation portraying tons of frostbitten U.S. citizens streaming into Mexico where it’s still toasty warm. The U.S. President and Vice President in the movie are caricatures of George Bush and Dick Cheney and the whole Bush administration is lambasted and lampooned for it’s “so-what” attitude toward conserving and protecting our environment.

If you don’t mind corny dialogue and predictable disaster movie story situations and just wanna see some honkin’ huge, gnarly waves, dude… Along with other exciting effects… go check this one out. You could do worse on a popcorn Memorial Day weekend.

 

This film is rated PG-13 for intense situations.

Official Film Website - The Day After Tomorrow

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