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DVD Corner: ‘Day After Tomorrow’ is preposterous

Mac Olsen
for Spotlight

Rated PG by Canadian Home Video Rating; 2 hours, 3 minutes; $13.49 for single-disc DVD edition (reviewed), $33.99 for two-disc edition and $21.49 for Blu-ray at www.amazon.ca

Director Ronald Emmerich has a fetish for end-of-the-world, apocalyptic tales, including 2004’s ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ – a storytelling style which stretches believability beyond the breaking point.

The movie stars Dennis Quaid as Jack Hall, Jake Gyllenhaal as his son, Sam, Sela Ward as Dr. Lucy Hall and Ian Holm as Terry Rapson. Jack Hall is a scientist, trying to prove climate change will threaten the human race unless vast measures are taken immediately to reverse it. He devises complex computer models by using global weather monitoring equipment.

Hall keeps in contact with Rapson in Scotland, who’s monitoring the Atlantic Ocean’s temperature, which reveals the first signs of major trouble. Initially, Hall and Rapson don’t understand what’s happening, but they are concerned enough to bring it to the attention of those higher up in government, in the U.S. and around the world.

However, Hall’s warnings fall on deaf ears, especially with U.S. Vice President Becker (Kenneth Walsh). The Vice President thinks Hall’s predictions are a fallacy and throws it back in his face. Oh, how wrong he will be, later!

Meanwhile, Hall and his son have a falling out. Sam throws verbal daggers at his father before departing to New York City for a high school competition. His mother laments what’s happening between them, but there’s nothing she can do, as she’s busy looking after sick children at a Florida hospital.

Eventually, the doomsday scenario Hall has predicted comes true and it hits NYC. A tidal wave washes through the city, followed by a snowstorm which buries the Statue of Liberty. But this isn’t the worst, as an extreme cold front moves through and instantly freezes everybody and everything in its path. So, Hall decides to make a harrowing journey to NYC to rescue his son, even though the odds are against him.

Character development is not what this movie is about. Yes, the Hall family is at the centre of the story, but what happens between them is very anti-climactic, predictable.

The movie is really about special effects and the very implausible unfolding of a new ice age. You simply cannot suspend disbelief and accept the doomsday scenario the movie promotes.

True, climate change is plausible. However, massive climate change leading to another ice age is on the order of millennia or longer – and would not take place in just days as Emmerich postulates in this movie.

Environmentalists, undoubtedly, look favourably on the movie to promote their case for climate change. But it should be regarded purely as Hollywood entertainment and nothing more.

Overall, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ deserves only two stars out of five because it is so unbelievable. Only the special effects depicting the natural disasters make it worth viewing.