Review: The Day After Tomorrow

Dennis Quaid stars as a Palaeoclimatologist who isn’t on pig-headed Vice President Kenneth Welsh’s Christmas card list, after Quaid pretty much publically humiliated him. Quaid is approached by a British scientist (Ian Holm) with frightening evidence that Quaid’s estimate of an upcoming new ice age in about 50-100 years is actually a gross under-calculation. Unfortunately, because the VP is an ignorant dick with a grudge against Quaid, Welsh ignores any warnings from Quaid about this issue. America is therefore up frozen shit creek without a backup plan, as crazily cold temperatures and storms hit like you wouldn’t believe. The bulk of the film is split between Quaid trying to make it from Washington to New York, to rescue his estranged son Jake Gyllenhaal, and Gyllenhaal’s experiences on a doomed school trip where he and his friends (principally the very pretty Emmy Rossum) hole themselves up in the public library. Perry King is the POTUS, Adrian Lester is one of Holm’s associates, and Sela Ward is Quaid’s ex, a doctor who stays on duty with a young cancer patient, whilst also worrying about son Gyllenhaal.

 

Look, there’s no doubt that director Roland Emmerich (“Universal Soldier”, “Stargate”, “ID4”) and his co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff have taken the issue of climate change and gone and added a whole lotta steroids to it. However, aside from insane climate change deniers, most people would at least agree that this 2004 disaster movie features stuff that is at least in theory plausible…just sped-up big time for the purposes of drama. That’s kinda what a good popcorn movie does, and indeed this is one of the better ones of the 00s, so long as you don’t take it too seriously.

 

The opener is very silly, but hair-raising, with Jay O. Sanders apparently doing his best Rip Torn vocal impersonation. Yes, the opener shares similarities with “Deep Impact”, only with a different kind of trouble afoot, but once the weather really kicks in, the film finds its own identity. Dennis Quaid is an excellent choice for the lead, very easy to relate to, and Jake Gyllenhaal is similarly ingratiating as his son. He has one hilarious scene where we cut from falling ice in Japan to a shot of bored-looking Gyllenhaal, that intentional or not had me thinking of “Donnie Darko”. Emmy Rossum, meanwhile, shows real star quality in this, so it’s a shame that her best exposure has really been on TV. Yes, she’s kind of a star now, just not as big as I personally predicted upon seeing her in this, “Mystic River”, and “Phantom of the Opera”. She’s charismatic and a genuinely good actress, even in something like this where it’s not always easy to distinguish yourself amongst the FX work. Bilbo Baggins himself, Ian Holm also brings a nice sense of English genteel to his scientist character as well, and is there any cameo player more hilariously arsehole-ish than Rick Hoffman?

 

This is really well-staged stuff, mixing CGI and more traditional FX, and although over-the-top, it never looks fake. They still hold up a decade later, actually, which is really quite remarkable to me. There’s a few flaws, though. I feel a bit sorry for character actor Kenneth Welsh, whose character is there to be wrong about everything at all times. The character is a familiar one in films like this, but it’s too much. The wolves, meanwhile, were extremely unnecessary and silly, too. Also, Perry King is one helluva cut-rate casting choice to play the US President, if you ask me. Were Peter Strauss, William R. Moses, Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, and Chad Lowe all busy or something?

 

This is just straight-up well-staged mayhem and disaster, but with at least two central characters the audience can get invested in and hope to see come out of this situation alive. Usually these films are about watching famous people die spectacularly, here’s one where you genuinely care about them enough to not want to see that. Well, except Rick Hoffman, that smug yuppie bastard deserves to bite it.

 

Rating: B-