Reviewed by: Joe

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Produced by: Ute Emmerich, Kelly Van Horn, Roland Emmerich, & Mark Gordon

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Ian Holm, & Dash Mihok

Action/Adventure, Science Fiction/Fantasy and Thriller 2 hrs. 4 min. 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.

Roland Emmerich and his band of disaster-flick cronies dispatch with all concepts of space and time, not to mention any at all scientific merit, in order to achieve their goal of promoting an overly-drawn out environmental agenda so clichéd that by the end of the film’s nearly two hour run you’ll be saddened to contemplate the thought of this being the last stand of the environmental wackos of the world. If these people so vividly believe the ideas that they promote, why would they ever soil their core beliefs by having them mixed together with over-the-top special effects and bad science that, in the end, contradicts any serious scientific merit they are trying to achieve? Time serves no purpose within the film, although humanity seems to be always short of it whenever the script calls for it to be. In what should take it thousands, if not millions, of years, the cataclysmic effects of global warming unfold before our eyes in a time frame of less then two weeks, though that is a rough estimate as no accurate time line of events is given. Granted things need to fit within a two hour film but even for the sake of global warming even that is a little ridiculous. On top of that, the liberal propaganda machine rolls out a weak excuse to lift current immigration policies via a turning of the tables scenario late within the film. In the future has Mexico gone loco when they are dealing with a global catastrophe and they are more concerned about getting even on immigration policies then saving lives?

As was said earlier, The Day After suffers severely from predictable and overly clichéd situations that become more abundantly clear as the movie progresses. So much so that one wonders why not a single studio executive raised the red-flag before letting this get off the drawing-board. Without rambling out an entire list, which would be tediously long, let’s say the best, if not the most unnoticed, example lied in the scene in which Sam Hall watches another guy come in and flirt with Laura, the girl he likes, while “You don’t want to hurt me … You don’t want to make me cry” plays softly in the background of the cafeteria. And lastly, it is absolutely disturbing to contemplate the filmmakers ever wanting to showcase the destruction of New York City after the destructive event that took place on September 11th, 2001, and yet it is prominent here. Haven’t New Yorkers, let alone Americans in general, been through enough that they should witness this on screen? How many damn times does Emmerich have to destroy NYC before he gets his final kicks? Perhaps one day the FBI would like a conversation with Mr. Emmerich and his disaster team. On a more serious note, no amount of eye-popping special-effects can save this film from being anything more then environmental propaganda to warn of an event they themselves can not substantially prove.