The Day After Tomorrow

What's the Plot?

Climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) believes he has made a rather important discovery: his research indicates that global warming could trigger an abrupt and catastrophic shift in the planet's climate, causing a new ice age. But not in his lifetime. He was wrong. A series of increasingly severe weather events begin to occur around the world: hail the size of grapefruit batters Tokyo, record-breaking hurricanes pound Hawaii, snow falls in New Delhi, and then a series of city-levelling tornadoes lay waste to Los Angeles. Confirmation from Professor Rapson (Ian Holm) confirms Jack's worst fears: the melting polar ice caps has poured too much fresh water into the oceans, disrupting them and forcing a new ice age that will sweep the planet in one global super storm. As Jack tries to convince The White House about the impending danger, his 17 year-old son, Sam, (Jake Gyllenhaal) and friend, Laura (Emmy Rossum), is in New York City just as a wall of water engulfs it, submerging all of it's buildings and subjecting it's inhabitants to plummeting temperatures. Just before all communication is lost, Jack is able to give his son one warning: stay inside at all costs. As the entire Northern Hemisphere fights to stay alive in this "global killer," Jack promises his wife, Lucy (Sela Ward) that he will rescue Sam. Can the human spirit triumph over it's greatest challenge of it's own making, or will the next ice age claim another species from the planet's surface ?

The Review

Roland Emmerich (Director, Producer, Story, Screenplay) has a definite "thing" about New York. It has been trashed twice in his Independence Day and Godzilla films, and even though we get to see "L.A. go bye-bye" and say "so long to Scotland," it's definitely New York that sees the brunt of the CGI effects in this summer's best blockbuster offering so far. The Day After Tomorrow has all the ingredients that a genuine crowd-pleaser requires to make the popcorn-paying-punters feel that their money was well-spent. Heading back to the "old school" of disaster movies, it has no real major talent amongst it's cast, leaving that wonderful feeling that you're not entirely sure just who might buy it before the end credits roll.

You're given enough people upon the screen for you to at least care about and/or identify with, so that the personal struggle against nature becomes more effective, and these characters are given just the right amount of "cheese" so that, even though you may find yourself groaning at some of the predicaments, it's never for long or at just one person: unlike the President's speech in Independence Day. Here, the movie gives you a kind of The Poseidon Adventure re-enactment with the "always proven" plot structure from Jaws. The "baddie" - nature this time - makes a sneak attack at the very beginning to unsettle the audience and stars; someone high up - the Vice-President this time instead of the Mayor of Amity - ignores the warnings, then all hell breaks loose with the remaining characters trying to hold out against the "baddie."

The cast does exactly what it would say on the Truly Great Disaster Movie tin, but yet again, it's the effects that really stay in the mind. The set-pieces of L.A. tornado'ed and New York flooded are the new bench-marks for other CGI'd films this year and the final "attack by the baddie" is a fantastic nail-biting sequence that somehow manages to involve wolves! What more do you want for god's sake! Like the proverbial roller-coaster, it's fun and frightening. See now!

STEVE'S SCORES