Roland Emmerich, who last made the White House and Empire State Building explode in Independence Day, is back on solid epic apocalypse ground in the special effects-laden The Day After Tomorrow, a true summer popcorn movie if ever there were one.
Clunky dialogue. Awkward and even outlandish situations. Yet awesome and real-looking effects to keep you glued to your seat -- like a half dozen tornadoes ripping through Los Angeles, a tidal wave of water flooding Manhattan, a sudden freeze that begins at the top of the Chrysler Building and shatters windows all the way down as the temperature steadily drops toward street level.
Like those other recent end-of-the-world movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, in which asteroids and comets respectively threatened the Earth, The Day After Tomorrow takes a natural disaster of minimal probability and blows it up to gargantuan size. This end-of-the-world science-fantasy is built around global warming and the sudden Ice Age that it creates across the Northern Hemisphere (something to do with the melting polar ice pack, sea water salinity, changing ocean currents and, well, don't ask, it's sort of explained in the film).
Besides, you don't really go to see a mega-disaster movie like The Day After Tomorrow for the pseudo-science, the what-if possibilities, nor to see Dennis Quaid in a parka trudging across an ice pack to rescue his son, who is trapped in the New York Public Library. You want to see the Statue of Liberty shrouded in ice, tornadoes ripping down the Hollywood sign, two stories of rushing water flinging buses and taxis around Manhattan's skyscraper canyons. In this, The Day After Tomorrow delivers in spades.
And although the human plot, which revolves around an absentee father trying to make up with his long-suffering son, is cheesily melodramatic, Emmerich doesn't stint on making some political points. The Day After Tomorrow is, above all else, a message movie. So Emmerich gleefully takes potshots at the ecologically challenged Bush administration, one of whose first acts was to pull out of the Kyoto Treaty to halt the scary effects of global warming.
At a preview screening of The Day After Tomorrow, some hissed the character of the vice president of the United States, played by Kenneth Welsh, who bears more than a cursory resemblance to Dick Cheney, especially when he pooh-poohed the fears of a coming new Ice Age from climatologist Jack Hall (Quaid). Later, in a subtle but pointed scene, the U.S. president (Perry King) comes into the vice president's office looking as though he had just come off a fishing excursion. When told about the tornadoes that have devastated Los Angeles, slicing through skyscrapers, the hapless president asks the vice president, "What do you think we should do?"
Emmerich, who co-wrote the script and also wrote the story the whole cataclysmic shebang is based on, begins The Day After Tomorrow with a dandy whoops! of an opening sequence -- a research team in Antarctica suddenly finds itself over an enormous ice shelf that's tearing away from the continent, leaving one scientist dangling over a mile-deep crevasse.
Soon, the snow falling over New Delhi, sudden temperature drops off the New England coast and helicopters freezing in mid-air, not to mention those L.A. twisters, make even the White House take notice. So do a lot of Americans who, in one of the film's few funny sequences, go poring across the border for refuge in warm Mexico in such reversal-of-fortune numbers that the Mexican government closes the border to these illegal gringo aliens.
In the midst of the calamity, Jack chides the vice president, who had previously been doubtful of Jack's predictions, with "You didn't want to hear the science when it could have made a difference." Then Jack tries to get out of D.C. and reach his son Sam, (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has taken refuge in the New York Public Library with his new girlfriend (Emmy Rossum) and school group, burning books to keep away the Big Freeze. After Sam nearly drowns in the rising waters, she cuddles close. "I'm using my body heat to warm you," she assures, in a coy effort to speed up their romance.
Meanwhile, back in D.C., Jack's still-loving ex-wife (Sela Ward), a doctor, tries to save a little cancer patient who has been left alone in the hospital when everyone else has fled.
There are also survivors who foolhardily dare to risk leaving their library refuge in a freezing blizzard to find food, hungry wolves who've escaped from the Central Park Zoo and a Russian ship that has sailed up Fifth Avenue.
That's a lot of characters and situations to keep jumping between. But Emmerich accomplishes this balancing act deftly and with assurance. It's not at all scientific fact, but it sure makes for thrilling adventure.
***1/2
The Day After Tomorrow
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok, Jay O. Sanders, Sela Ward, Austin Nichols, Arjay Smith, Tamlyn Tomita, Kenneth Welsh, Perry King.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence, disturbing images.
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