The Day After Tomorrow

Synopsis: Climatologist Jack (Dennis Quaid) delivers a paper to a United Nations global warming conference in New Delhi with a theory about how global warming can eventually cause an ice age. An interesting theory that comes to fruition sooner than anyone thought, and thus another disaster movie is born. This is also a story about Jack walking across ice and snow to his trapped son (Jake Gyllenhaal) in frozen New York.

It’s probably quite fashionable if you’re a critic to pan this film. And what a target – a big budget American megaplex SFX saturated disaster movie. Easy pickings. But I really liked it. Yes, I was sucked in by the special effects and the drama ( I prefer to call it a successful suspension of disbelief ). But I liked it mainly because it is, amazingly for an American mainstream feature film, a touch subversive.

To the special effects first. Not only do you get to see what New York would like if it was flooded by a huge tidal wave, with a ship surreally making its way through flooded streets, but you also get to see New York freeze over. So cold that if you go outside you will freeze to death. Another truly spectacular climactic scene includes a menacing sequence of multiple tornados ravaging Los Angeles. Nature at its most destructive looking absolutely, strangely beautiful.

Visual tricks aside, this is also an important warning about global warming which, coming from a country that refuses to sign the Kyoto treaty because it may threaten the American way of life, is a commendable message. There are also some other timely observations about American self-centeredness. Thus, the American Vice-President cares more about economic fragility than environmental fragility and doesn’t want the environment to get in the way of making a quick buck. There’s a also nice role reversal with America seeking refuge from the impending Northern Ice Age by crossing into Mexico, which then closes its borders. This motivates the Americans to illegally cross the Rio Grande and, to use a pun, ‘flood’ across the border. It’s intriguing to consider what it would be like if Americans were refugees and how they would expect the world to help them in a time of crisis.

The acting is competent, but it really has nowhere much to go as the cast work their way through the genre-honoured lines. Accept that the film isn't a masterpiece - just sit back, relax and enjoy the special effects and the irony of America, for once, in the position of needing of a helping hand.

 

 

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