5 June 2004
Review: The Day After Tomorrow (2/5)
An arctic ice shelf drops into the ocean, tornadoes decimate Los Angeles, hurricanes the size of Greenland flash-freeze everything in their path, and Manhattan first floods and then ices over. The Day After Tomorrow was quite a spectacle (most of which was shown in previews).
Inspired by the book The Coming Global Superstorm, strangely authored by Art Bell (weird, conspiracy-theory catch-all AM radio guy) and Whitley Strieber (who had previously written about his abduction by aliens), the science is as interesting as you'd expect from a disaster film, although IANATVWM (I am not a TV weather man). Some conservative comentators got all twisty over the mention of Global Warming in the movie. It's discussed in the beginning where the Vice President, looking very Cheney-like, chooses economics over environment, and in the end he apologizes to a (greatly diminished) world for that hubris. Admittedly, a pretty accurate caricature, but it's just a movie so get over it.
The characters are likeable enough. They encounter some problems, resolve them, some of the people die, some suffer, most of the major ones live. A couple of the deaths are really kind of grisly with the flash-freezing and all. Some of the secondary characters (such as Ian Holm as a loveable professor and his two assistants) you really begin to care about.
We left the movie (in 80-degree weather mind you) with chills from all of the larget-than-life arctic scenes such as the frozen Statue of Liberty.
2/5 seems pretty low, but I really can't go to 3. I still recommend it ... hopefully it will be at the drive-in this summer. It would be a good drive-in type movie.
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