The Day After Tomorrow
"When this storm is over, we'll be in a new ice age." - Jack
release year: 2004
genre: disaster drama
viewing setting: home Bluray 1/12/23 and 2/12/14 (during ice storm) and home DVD 1/5/11 and 1/11/07 and theater 5/30/04
synopsis: All these years of mankind destroying the ecosystem come back to haunt us, as strange and powerfu weather demolishes much of the world.
impressions: Great effects, much destruction, a few implausibilities. It was definitely worth seeing on the big screen. I liked watching tornadoes destroy Los Angeles, floods demolish New York, and extreme cold devastate England. The movie did a pretty good job of showcasing individual human drama/struggles in the face of all this. The science is iffy, which is tolerable, though I question the way in which a super-cold-snap advances and retreats like it did here. I also wasn't quite satisfied with the way in which the entire crisis was resolved at the end.
acting: Dennis Quaid did a good job as the expert who also has to worry about his son, who's stuck in New York City as the storms roll in. Jake Gyllenhaal is the genius son who ends up trapped with some of his friends from school. Emmy Rossum is his fellow student and love interest. The love interest from The Karate Kid 2 is all-grown up here as a helpful NASA scientist.
final word: This is a good enough disaster movie to make you think "wow" and "what if...?" after you walk out, so it's worth watching.
back to the main review page