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My Thoughts on The Day After Tomorrow
When I was in eighth grade, my science teacher told our class about the rapid climatic shift that takes place on Earth every 10,000 years or so, causing ice ages. I was absolutely fascinated by this idea and remember mentioning it to some acquaintances years later, who promptly called me crazy for believing something like that. So, to all of those who doubted me, I'd just like to inform you that The Day After Tomorrow is about a sudden climatic change on Earth brought about by global warming. This change causes many catastrophic weather conditions and weather anomalies which ultimately lead to a new ice age.
The story centers around Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a climatologist who discovers the imminent danger of the oncoming storms, and his son Sam Hall (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is trapped in New York due to the weather conditions. This movie is directed and written by Roland Emmerich, who also directed and co-wrote Independence Day, and stars the aforementioned Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, as well as Sela Ward as Sam Hall's mother, and Bilbo Baggin-, er, I mean Ian Holm.
I should probably refer to the actors in this movie by their characters' names but since I had to look them up on Internet Movie Database I am not going to bother. Character development wasn't the main point of this movie, even though amidst the impending ice age, this is really just a story about a boy and his dad.
Unfortunately, Jake Gyllenhaal has to leave his parents in D.C. to go to New York City for some kind of Intellectual Decathlon. I think we called it Academic Bowl at my high school. Whatever. Just understand that the four high school characters are ubergoobers. And that they are in New York. And that Dennis Quaid wishes he could spend more time with Jake Gyllenhaal because he sucks as a father but totally rocks as a climate meteorology paleontologist nutcase scientific guy. The unfortunate part is that the whole ice age thing hits while Jake Gyllenhaal is in New York.
Although it's good news for Dennis Quaid, because in addition to understanding all the crazy weather, he suddenly has a chance to redeem himself and become a good father by going to get his son. Don't think about how far it is from D.C. to New York. Just enjoy the destruction!
This movie has all of the tried and true elements of a good apocalyptic story. People are sleeping in control rooms as one small computer across the room beeps and blinks a line in red. There's an out-of-control drink tray on an airplane that crashes down the aisle. But, most importantly, the animals all know it's about to jump off before anyone else does. Except for Dennis Quaid, of course.
There's also the deaf ear from the politicians who only start listening after the ice is upon them. If I ever run for office, I am totally listening to ANY scientific nutcase that starts yelling about aliens or weather or meteors or whatever. They always speak the truth, man. Because when Dennis Quaid tells you to evacuate, he's not joking around.
I might be biased because I work in a library, but I really liked the moment when everyone had to run into the New York Public Library for safety. Once the characters who are stuck in New York reach the library, we learn about the importance of books and the written word and how books have many uses in addition to being burned as fuel to keep everyone warm and alive. Of course the librarians are stereotypical and stuffy and intelligent enough to know which book to refer to for information. At one point a librarian actually says, "Books are good for more than burning, you know!" as she helps solve the mysterious illness of one of the survivors. So, yay for books! They can save your life in so many ways! (Of course, if the power had still been on, the Internet would have provided all the information they needed....)
Continuing with the magical powers of the library, later scenes in the movie point out that if you leave the library you die. Some people didn't listen to Jake Gyllenhaal and went outside to try to walk to warmer areas. They died. I'm telling you, just as books have many uses, so do libraries! The library got such good press in this movie that it almost made me forget that they pretend there's only one public library in all of New York City. And the whole thing about the public library having a Gutenberg Bible? Yeah, okay. I'm sure that happens all the time....
One disappointing feature of this film is that I saw most of the destruction sequences on the trailers and teasers before its release. Not that the gigantic, softball-size hail storms and the multiple tornadoes in L.A. which all join together to be that last tornado from Twister weren't satisfying. They just weren't new. The same is true for the flooding and freezing disaster sequences. It was great to see all that destruction in detail up on the big screen, but I always knew what to expect so I didn't have any moments when I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I like for my action movies to include a little shortness of breath on my part. I didn't have that here.
Also, some parts of the movie are hard to accept. I can suspend disbelief about there being an ice age within seven days of the first softball-sized hail, but I do not believe that the President of the U.S. would be the last person left in the White House. Or if he was the last person he certainly wouldn't be in the oval office making phone calls. Also, the wolves from the zoo would never have survived that long. Seriously. Plus they looked like CGI wolves. Were they real or was I just having a Harry Potter flashback? The last complaint I have is that I don't understand how the people walking to New York to rescue Jake Gyllenhaal are able to walk around outside with their faces exposed. It's a New Ice Age, remember? They don't have on anything other than some ski goggles and hats. Why aren't they frozen?
The editorials on the environment and USA as the great consumer and polluter are a little too numerous for my taste. There are also lots of scenes in which many scientific words are spoken. Words that I didn't understand. I think my notes taken during the movie say it best: "Quiet parts boring." Usually during these parts I just reflected on how nice it was that Dennis Quaid got himself a little movie. It's been a long time since I've seen him in a film. I blame that crazy Meg Ryan. I bet he's glad he had her during her "normal human lips" phase.
In conclusion, I have a few awards to, well, award to parts of the movie:
Best Badass: The Weather. The tornadoes, floods, and shots of the storms from space were awesome. It just goes to show that even all these years later, it's still not nice to fool Mother Nature!
Dorkiest Moment: When, in the midst of possible human extinction, Jake Gyllenhaal takes the time to admit to the pretty girl that he joined Academic Bowl because of her. This proves that no matter what kind of cataclysm is going on, teenagers will always be egotistical and self-absorbed.
All the Geeks Drooled When: Anytime there was a wide shot in this movie. The director is indeed the master of "HUGE." The scope of the film is simply awesome and he captured all the cityscapes and shots from outer space looking back at Earth beautifully. There's even a shot at the beginning of the film in Antarctica where there's nothing but snow and sky and it was fabulous.
The Moment Worth the Full Price of Admission: (Since I had already seen the best parts of the destruction sequences, I am going to choose something that was constant throughout the movie.) None of the important characters died in ways that evoked Excessive Sentimentality Tears. This might have been because of very little character development, but I went to see stuff get destroyed, not to learn a lot about the characters. A bonus moment that was worth the full price of admission was seeing the trailer for King Arthur.
My Favorite Moment: When this movie proved all those people wrong for calling me crazy. My eighth grade teacher knew what he was talking about. So there!