USA, 2004
Director: Roland Emmerich
Score: *
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW is sure proof that Hollywood has perfected the technique of filmmaking by the numbers.  You would swear that there must be a computer in every major studio that upon pressing certain keys would produce sequences like natural disaster, love interest, father/son conflict, hero with ***censored*** superior dispute et al.  Not only is it used here but without any thought given towards any climax, suspense or audience anticipation.

The plot concerns global warming resulting in another ice age.  How this comes about is explained with fervor by Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid).  Quaid plays some scientist – but at this point in the film, the theory is muddled, as this reviewer has already dozed off one of the many dozen times.  Before you can yell tornado, two have hit L.A., and a blizzard has swept New York.  So, father Jack has to make it down on foot with his sidekicks (though not given much is given to them to do in the film but die) to be with his son Sam in New York to prove that he is a good dad!  Mother, Lucy (Sela Ward), meanwhile, has to content with an inane sub-plot of having to wait for an ambulance to save a cancer patient.

Dennis Quaid, really good in FAR FROM HEAVEN and Jake Gyllenhaal, even better in DONNIE DARKO and LOVELY AND AMAZING go through the motions of playing father and son.  Even British veteran Ian Holm looks hopelessly lost with his last glass of scotch.

If there is any saving grace in the movie, it would have to be the entertaining ridiculous dialogue.  Take these three lines (uttered in sequence): “The glass is going to break.” “There is too much weight.” “It is not going to hold!” The filmmakers must be thoughtful of their blind audiences as well.

The special effects?  Every summer movie has its share.  I would rather not have mine mostly generated using CGI.

The Americans have to head south to avoid the big chill.  Rushing illegally to Mexico, the Americans now become the undesired aliens.  But this nice touch is worked to the bone. The U.S. vice-president (played by Canadian Kenneth Welsh) undergoing a change of heart – he was the ***censored*** in the movie - is a bit far-fetched but what else in this movie isn’t? The last act of the film reveals an awful side of the script’s peachiness. Be good to the environment, love and forgive thy neighbor (U.S. forgiving Mexico) and love one other for all that it is worth.

It could be argued that creating real suspense for a disaster film is no easy task. But one can learn from classic films like Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (with a similar destruction of mankind theme) or Cameron’s TITANIC (another disaster epic). Anticipation of what might happen next and a strong narrative (the love interest in TITANIC) are a few of the answers. But THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW succeeds in getting its name down in the film annals as the truly disastrous movie of this decade.

Review by Gilbert Seah.