The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Originally Written

Monday , January 30, 2006

The Day After Tomorrow is your typical disaster film, exaggerated to the nth degree. Dennis Quaid is climatologist Jack Hall, who proposes a theory of dramatic change in the oceans temperature, due to global warming, will lead to a set of deadly storms that will bring about the next Ice Age. Congress and the scientific community takes his theory with a grain of salt, and while it could potentially lead to a serious problem they see no rush in spending a lot of time and money preparing for something that might not happen for hundreds of years. But Jack was wrong... what he originally foresaw as a couple hundred years has quickly snowballed into a couple hours.

The Northern part of the world begins to experience freak storms, with tornadoes, hurricanes, non-stop raining, and a 10 degree per second drop in temperature, yes per second, causing everything to freeze solid. The film focuses on Jack whose always been more engrossed in his work than in his family. Most of the time he promises his son he'll be there for him and ends up letting work get the best of him. Now with his son Sam Hall (Jake Gyllenhaal) on a school trip in New York, Jack's work is about to get the best of his son, who is caught in the of one of the nations biggest storms.

The special effects in this film are quite impressive, but it’s all overshadowed by the fact that the entire premise is completely ridiculous. With non-stop action from start to finish, but from beginning to end you'll constantly be saying to yourself, "yea right!" For some reason only half the world freezes over while the other half is fine. For some reason buildings completely freeze yet being inside a closed room protects you from temperature that is decreasing at a "believable" 10 degrees per second. Nothing in makes remotely any sense, yet if you can put the shear non-sense behind you, it all might be enjoyable.

The real question is if this film attempting to add more global warming nonsense to an already bloated lie, once again pushing the fact that if we don't start doing something to prevent it, then the effects might suddenly appear, such as they do in this film. Or is Day After Tomorrow, pure satire mixed with entertainment, in an attempt to prove how outlandish modern day global warming rantings are? But what I found to be the funniest was when Mexico was unaffected by the severe weather changes and began closing their borders when people from the US where trying to escape an icy fate. An obvious stab at another controversial issue in the United States surrounding Mexican illegal immigration. As a Californian in the thick of illegal immigration, if Mexico ever freezes over, then I won't have too much of an issue opening our borders and freely letting everyone come in, at least until their country thaws out!

6/10