Posted: 06/04/2004

The Day After Tomorrow

(2004)

by Coco Delgado

The Day After Tomorrow looks brilliant when you see its trailer before the movie you paid to see. Oooh, wow! The end of the world! New ice age! Statue of Liberty encased in ice!

And I wanted to like it. I really did. I liked Independence Day, which surprised me…but I guess my problem is that I’ve seen and read too many science fiction stories and film (some written by actual scientists).

Because Earth Abides this ain’t. Earth Abides, © 1949 by George R. Stewart, is pretty much my benchmark of what an end of the world film should be…of course I say this with the fervent hope that no one actually tries to make that book into a movie, because it could never live up to the readers’ expectations).

What we have here is Dennis Quaid playing someone more tough than he really is trying to save the world from freezing over. We have Jake Gyllenhaal as his gifted son (has anyone ever thought to cast Jake as Tobey McGuire’s younger brother in something? It would really work…) who apart from a homeless guy with a dog, is the only person who knows what to do.

My three biggest problems with this film can be summed up as follows:

1) Wolves. You have got to be kidding. And why only wolves? Why not Siberian tigers or grizzly bears?

2) Where does all this water that’s flooding Manhattan actually come from? The oceans are dropping in temperature, so it’s not melt. And it’s not raining that much…

3) The Statue of Liberty. Why has it always got to be the Statue of Liberty? So clichéd…it was all I could do not to quote Bob & Doug McKenzie when it came onscreen the first time…”Statue of Liberty.” “Pssst! ACT!”

Not only that…but if a tsunami hit Manhattan, I don’t think a hollow copper statue could withstand it.

So…as you can see, there’s a few Hummer-sized holes in the plot. Still, the special effects are superb and you can almost believe that this is what it would look like if and when it did actually happen. There’s a scene with a tornado in LA that just…well, blows you away.

It’s a fun movie. It tries to be a funny movie, too: the Third World starts taking in American refugees, and Mexico closes its borders to all the gringo wetbacks crossing the Rio Grande to enter that country illegal. Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee.

If you want to see a climactic disaster done right, rent or buy The Day the Earth Caught Fire, recently released on DVD. This is a British black-and-white film, yet it’s far more chilling than anything The Day After Tomorrow has to offer.

Interesting that a movie about people freezing instantly should be released at the beginning of summer…wouldn’t it be more effective to see it in the winter? Because, really…isn’t this just (as a friend of mine said) The Core on ice?

Coco Delgado lives in Cambridge-Somerville and always sits in the front row. Her 2003 New Years resolution is to see more than the 66 movies she saw last year.

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