The worst-case scenario effects of global warming are the subject of "The Day After Tomorrow," a new action film heavy on breathtaking visuals but light on story and complex characters. While the film successfully and admirably calls attention to the problem of the treatment of the environment, it is often weighed down by Hollywood clichés, and, while suspenseful, never rises to any genuine dramatic heights.
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a government climatologist who discovers that the melting of the polar ice caps due to global warming has disrupted currents in the Atlantic Ocean, potentially causing dramatic weather changes. Even when some of his theories begin to come true, he is ignored until it is too late, as three massive storms form and threaten to cause a second Ice Age. Hall struggles to connect (literally and figuratively) with his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is in New York for an academic competition, directly in the path of one of the storms. Hall decides to rush up the Atlantic coast to reach Sam in time, while his wife Lucy (Sela Ward), a doctor, risks death by staying in her hospital to care for a very ill young boy.
"The Day After Tomorrow" distinguishes itself from other near-apocalyptic disaster films such as "Armageddon" and director Roland Emmerich's own "Independence Day" by affording its characters no solutions to the approaching tragedy. Denied far-fetched avenues of escape, they must either struggle to survive or resign to their fates. There is a scene, late in the film, in which a team of European meteorologists realizes the inevitability of their deaths, and the actors' every expression and word become swollen with the complete absence of hope. It is easily the movie's most poignant moment.
With the "saving the world" plot point omitted, it would seem likely that the script would have more time to devote itself to such important issues as characterization and dialogue, but the film is mostly populated by repetitive weather-related discussions and action scenes. The dialogue in the film is particularly problematic, to the point of eliciting numerous (unintentional) guffaws.
The treatment of female characters is similarly discouraging, a significant step backward from the hard-earned emphasis on action heroines in films of recent years. Relegated to peripheral supporting roles, the women of "The Day After Tomorrow" do not participate in any of the action sequences, and become curiously detached from the rest of the characters (one is snowbound by one of the storms, another is incapacitated by blood poisoning). A couple of minority characters are treated strangely, too.
Remarkable special effects are certainly the film's strongest area, allowing even the most fantastic of images (tidal waves, an American flag freezing in mid-flutter) to display themselves convincingly. Surprisingly, the only instance in which the visual effects are not seamlessly integrated with the live action footage involves a computer-generated pack of wolves, not any of the storm-related CGI. The acting in the film is commendable, though none of the characters is meaty enough to require much of the stars, anyway.
Though real-life scientists have already discredited the movie's plausibility, the film serves as a reminder of the consequences that could arise, in some form, with the destruction of the planet. It might just be the most left-wing action movie ever. "The Day After Tomorrow" is neither a complete success nor a complete failure; it is an entertaining thrill ride that is merely disappointing because it contains the promise of something more.
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