The Day After Tomorrow
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Written by: Roland Emmerich, Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Ian Holm

The Day After Tomorrow is a personal film. It’s the story of a young child dealing with a horrifying disease, cancer. The child’s name is Peter, and his favourite book is ‘Peter Pan’. As he reads it, he dreams of a world where he can fly. A world where his cancer is just a bad dream. A world of magic. Unfortunately Peter is forced to deal with reality, and the disease that is slowly weakening his young and innocent body. While most viewers will be ultimately touched by this story of courage, others may be distracted by a subplot involving the coming of a second ice age.

The Day After Tomorrow is brought to us by ‘Master of Disaster’ Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, Universal Soldier). In Independence Day he destroyed L.A. and New York City, in Godzilla he destroyed New York City again, in The Day After Tomorrow he destroys… L.A. and New York City!!! Only this time it isn’t an alien attack or a giant radioactive lizard that’s doing the damage, it’s… THE WEATHER!! Dennis Quaid stars as Jack Hall, and does for paleoclimatologists what Jeff Goldblum did for mathematicians in Jurassic Park. He’s heroic and handsome and holds the knowledge needed to save lives during the worst storm of mankind. Of course when he’s not presenting this information to skeptical government leaders, he’s worrying about his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) who happens to be taking part in an academic competition in New York City. Although it turns out the only reason he’s there is because he has a crush on Laura (Emmy Rossum), a fellow competitor. Once the massive storm hits, Sam and Laura find themselves trapped inside a New York library, trying to survive the progressively bad conditions the storm throws at them. Meanwhile, Dennis Quaid decides to try and travel to New York to find his son.

Of course, people aren’t going to this movie to see personal dramas unfold on the screen. You go to a movie like this to watch national monuments getting destroyed. In this case, the movie pays off pretty good. Los Angeles is ravaged by multiple tornadoes, literally wiping the Hollywood sign clean. But the most anticipated aspect of the film is the destruction of Manhattan Island. A large tidal wave of water seeps through the streets of New York, destroying everything in its path. These are some of the most convincing effects I’ve seen in a long time. Helicopter views of the city show the water filling up the streets, right down to the detail of cars being brushed away by the massive waves. One can’t help but be reminded of 9/11 and wonder how conscious the filmmakers were in designing these scenes to not emulate that real life disaster too closely. This being one of the first ‘disaster films’ made after the terrorist attacks, ideas in the film must now be able to top what happened in reality, without reminding the audience of it.

Although the attack of the storms provide powerful images of destruction, the idea only works on a few levels. After the initial storms hit, scientists find out that a new storm is on its way which freezes everything in its path, including helicopters and humans. In a scene where Sam and his nerdy friends leave the library to find medicine for Laura’s injured leg, they are confronted with a race against the clock. The storm is slowly approaching and threatens to freeze them to death. You realize how little drama this holds when the director feels the need to add another element of danger, a pack of timber wolves which escaped from the Central Park zoo. When the heroes aren’t outrunning CGI wolves, they’re trying to escape from an unseen cold wind that is freezing the floor beneath them. Something just doesn’t work about people trying to outrun a temperature change.

Meanwhile Dennis Quaid and two of his loyal scientist friends decide to walk to New York City from Washington. The logic of this idea is only overshadowed by the incredibly ridiculous melodrama that occurs along their trek.

Overall, I was somewhat disappointed with The Day After Tomorrow. Usually the problem with a film like this is characters being overshadowed by special effects. But in this case, I wanted more time with the special effects because they were simply more interesting. Dennis Quaid was more believable in Innerspace and Jake Gyllenhaal was more respectable in Bubble Boy. But a film like this isn’t made to supply Academy Award winning performances. I think Emmerich himself has to accept the fact that people are more interested in his destruction than his writing. However, with all of that said I still believe Roland Emmerich is the perfect man for a 9/11 movie. — Jay C.