Movie Malcontent / THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

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THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW / Malcontent's Mark: B-

May 28th, 2004

Jack Hall: Dennis Quaid
Sam Hall: Jake Gyllenhaal
Laura Chapman: Emmy Rossum
Prof. Rapson: Ian Holm

Directed by Roland Emmerich.
Written by Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
Rated PG-13

First off, let me just say I'm a sucker for weather calamity. I consider Jack London’s To Build A Fire to be one of the great American short stories. And though I didn’t like the movie Twister, it was a kick to see CGI tornadoes ripping through the heartland. In The Day After Tomorrow, we get all types of bad weather. And it’s the worst kind of bad weather – the kind that kills half of the earth's population.

In The Day After Tomorrow, a dramatic temperature drop in the earth’s climate starts a chain reaction of cataclysmic weather conditions. Survivors from north of the Mason-Dixon line have to flee to Mexico to avoid the next Ice Age. When paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) learns his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) has found refuge in where else but a public library New York City, he dons his galoshes and Gore-Tex and plunges into the perfect storm and save him.

Director Roland Emmerich’s earlier efforts, Independence Day and Godzilla, were mired in movie clichés, clunky dialogue, and cardboard cut-out characters. In Tomorrow, the director shows he hasn’t made much progress in the character and dialogue department - Quaid just grimaces a lot while Gyllenhaal broods a lot. And he definitely should have scrapped the cancer patient subplot. But the inclusion of the indomitable Ian Holm adds a touch of class to the popcorny proceedings.

Usually, Emmerich throws too much excess on the screen - overblown special effects and sprawling doomsday destruction. In Tomorrow, it’s more of the same, but the CGI is astonishingly rendered – it’s more realistic and scarier than anything he’s conjured up before. It may sound boring on page, but just wait till you see what a sub-arctic temperature drop can do to a city. In the scene with the wolves that escaped from the zoo, however, you realize that CGI still has a long way to go before rendering convincing mammals. Stock footage of wolves in the Arctic might have been more believable.

The biggest surprise in Tomorrow is the few scenes where Emmerich actually holds back – the moments when he abstains from CGI and allows suggestion to do the work. At one point in a tornado sequence, the camera remains focused on a closed door. The way the light seeps in through the frame suggests something terrible has happened behind the door. The sequence is a creative use of light and shadow that even Hitchcock, the master of restraint, might have appreciated.

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