College Downtime Movie Review
Written by Raffman - June 4th, 2004
Day After Tomorrow, The (2004)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward
Director: Roland Emmerich
Rated: R
Rating: * * * 3 stars
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Going into this movie I had an open mind; a few friends said it was "entertaining" and some said it was "alright". One even went as far as to say the ending was terrible. The Day After Tomorrow, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day), is an overall good movie that has it's ups and downs. If you haven't caught the trailer for this intense drama, then I'll quickly summarize it. For those who have seen the trailor or at least know what the basic plot is need not read the next paragraph.
Quickly said, the plot of the movie revolves directly on the issue of global warming, and the dangers that it can bring to our ocean's currents. Dennis Quaid, who stars as a leading Climatologist, begins to warn about these dangerous affects, yet the US federal government simply turns it's shoulder and ignores it. Meanwhile these cause and effects have already come and gone cuasing the northern polar ice caps to melt, which in turn changes our ocean's temperatures radically, causing massive storms and destruction. In sum, a second ice age is arriving with no one expecting it but Quaid and his colleagues.
While Emmerich does an outsanding job creating lifelike and realistic special effects, the writing and actual screenplay tend to suffer a bit even though Quaid and the others perform quite well. I really think they should've gone over the script a few more times and thought about some of the horrible one-liners that are said and at least tried to fix them. Now even though these don't hurt the movie experience they are present and are at least worth noting. Special effects is the area where the film really shines, and by shine I mean shine reflecting off 20 feet of snow bright. These effects really help the movie out and helps pull the viewer in; which is something that good movies simply have a knack of doing. In fact the effects and environments were so good that I was literally shivering by the end of it; granted the AC was on in the theatre and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but come on now, it's fucking summer. It's experiences like those that play with your emotions that help this movie shine.
On a different note, this is not a movie I'd really want to sit through again, as good as it was. Seeing millions of people freeze to death, flocking to mexico, and tornados ravaging downtown Los Angeles really gets me down. As gripping and realistic as the movie is it really is fucking depressing; almost downright sad. I'm starting to think Emmerich has some "Global Devastation Fetish" or something seeing how his two biggest movies revolve around that idea. It's really only an educated guess at this point, but if he comes out with another global devastation film in the next 5 years then I'm changing it to a theory. Three stars out of four.
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