The Day After Tomorrow
The Plot:
This movie takes a big-budget, special-effects-filled look at what the world would look like if the greenhouse effect and global warming continued at such levels that they resulted in worldwide catastrophe and disaster, including multiple hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of the next Ice Age. At the center of the story is a paleoclimatologist (a scientist who studies the ways weather patterns changed in the past), Professor Adrian Hall (Quaid), who tries to save the world from the effects of global warming while also trying to get to his son, Sam (Gyllenhaal), who was in New York City as part of a scholastic competition, when the city was overwhelmed by the chilling beginnings of the new Ice Age. In addition to all of the other challenges Dr. Hall faces, he's also going against the flow as humanity races south to warmer climes, and he's nearly the only one going north. (From Yahoo Movies)
My Thoughts: (Reviewed by Big Pun)
This movie seems to have a lot of weird buzz around it…first off, it seems reviewers and people I talk to either hate this movie completely or kind of liked it….there was no one who really loved it….Include me in this group…I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it…I saw the film with two other people, one felt as I did and the other hated it…in fact, she laughed out loud on a few occasions at how ridiculous the movie seemed…the other hype surrounding this movie has been politically driven…given the nature of the film dealing with global warming and our current administrations environmental policies ….
I found the premise of this movie an interesting one…what would happen if the polar ice caps actually melted?...well, come to find out the answer is basically the worst weather patterns imaginable along with most of the northern hemisphere falling into an ice age…and after doing a little research after seeing this movie, it turns out that the science involved in making the picture is pretty accurate….turns out that if global warming continues at its current alarming rate, we could see ourselves falling into an ice age…now, granted, we are talking more realistically many, many, many years down the road not the two days this movie portrays, but still, its some scary stuff to think about….in fact, the extreme weather patterns seen in the film actually hit closer to home than the ice age stuff….there have been increased tornadoes in the Midwest, longer drought seasons, extreme heat, remember France last summer?...a couple of thousand people died….I guess my point is that actual scientific study gives this movie some credibility for me…I bought the premise….
The center of the story revolves around Dennis Quaid’s character, scientist Adrian Hall…Hall has studied closely the effects of global warming and theorizes that the world is headed for major disaster…only problem is that no one listens to him…the Vice President (closely looks like our own Dick Cheney) won’t give him the time of day and blows off environmental issues…this sets the stage for the pending disaster that Hall has foreseen….except, he never though it would happen so quickly….in the span of just a few days the world’s weather is sent into a tailspin due to the changing North Atlantic current…Massive amounts of rain…huge tornados in LA…and finally the President begins to take notice as the impending storm nears….and what a storm it is…the size of a giant hurricane that drops some much snow and ice it buries NY city….and in the eye of this storm, a deep freeze that will kill anything in its path…..
Adding to this, Hall’s family is stretched to the far reaches in the race against certain death…his brilliant son is holed up in NY city…his wife, waiting with a dying child for the evacuation crews to arrive….and Hall is faced with the decision of trying to save his son in NY as the rest of mankind heads for the Mexican border in search of shelter from the storm….
Now this is where some of the cheesy ridiculous nature of the movie kicks in…the idea that Hall can walk from Philly to Manhattan in the worst blizzard of mankind in like a day is laughable…and the scene with the wolves and a large tanker ship in the middle of a frozen New York is beyond silly…..but these dumb little things didn’t ruin the movie for me, they were just mere annoyances…
I enjoyed this movie…I wasn’t expecting much heading in considering I am not a fan of disaster movies…most seem to fall way short for me and are often beyond believability….but this movie was different…I believed that these things could happen….maybe not in my lifetime…but I think that it portrayed our countries general lack of concern for the environment perfectly and that’s what hit home the most…
I wouldn’t rush out to see this film…it definitely qualifies as a rental…but if you do see it, give it a chance….don’t dismiss it so quickly…try and see past some of the silly stuff….there is some good to be found….
Starring:
Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Ian Holm, Dash Mihok
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Rated PG-13