Day-After-Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow

~An unnatural disaster~

By Todd Karella
March 28, 2004

Jack Hall-Dennis Quaid

Laura Chapman-Emmy Rossum

Sam Hall-Quaid & Jason Evans-Dash Mihok

Sam Hall-Jake Gyllenhaal

A Twister In L.A.

Snowstorm In N.Y.

It's not nuclear war, a comet crashing into the Earth or a terrorist attack that's going to destroy the world, but in The Day After Tomorrow it's the dreaded coming of the Ice

Age that we should all be terrified of. Normally, not an incredibly terrifying event as it takes thousands of years to occur and you can simply move

out of the way as it races towards you at a terrifying pace of an unbelievable few inches a year. But in Writer/Director Roland Emmerich's vision it could be here at any time and will occur in one massive storm covering the entire planet.
The basic premise is a Hollywood dream because it can roll every previous natural disaster film into one movie. Not only does this

guarantee big numbers at the box office, but it also can be a political statement as it blames the disaster on the current administration and its neglect of the Global Warming Phenomenon. It's no coincidence that it's an election year and the thickheaded Vice President (Kenneth Welsh) who dismisses the theory looks strikingly like the current Vice President, Dick Chaney.
Even with the beat-you-over-the-head message and the destruction of the United States, the movie is fun and enjoyable. After all, it's a disaster movie. All anyone really expects are some good destruction scenes and a bunch of people running around in a panic doing absurd things. In that regard the movie delivers exactly what is expected.

Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a Paleoclimatologist, try saying that ten times fast. He has been studying the history of the Earth's climate and the possibility of a new Ice Age. According to his model, this could happen in the next 100 years if something isn't done soon. Expressing his concerns at a conference in New Dehli, gets him

nowhere as the world's biggest polluter, the United States, seems more concerned with financial well-being than the concerns of the environment. Unfortunately, Jack is wrong about his predictions. The Ice Age isn't going to wait for another 100 years. It's coming right now. In one global-encompassing storm the entire northern hemisphere will be snow encrusted within the next 7-10 days.
   Massive changes in the weather patterns are the first signs of the coming devastation. Huge basketball-sized hailstones fall on Tokyo and snow in New Dehli.
   At the same time, Jack's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) heads off with his classmates to New York city to compete in an Academic Decathlon. Sam wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for his crush on fellow teammate Laura (Emmy Rossum). Soon after their arrival, the storm begins.
   While most people think Los Angeles will someday be destroyed by earthquakes, it is instead destroyed by multiple tornadoes that spring up without warning. The special effects are spectacular and it's a little creepy seeing such things as the Hollywood sign and the Capitol records building being torn apart. The destruction is diluted with some unintentional comedy as reporters take to the sky in helicopters in the midst of several tornadoes just to get the news.
   Before anyone can understand what is happening, severe rain storms come to New York city, culminating with a tidal wave that washes into Manhattan. Jack and his wife Lucy (Sela Ward) are worried about their son and hope that he has managed to get to safety.
   Sam and his friends have survived and are trapped in the public library. Using a pay phone which is nearly submerged, and thankfully the telephone polls that he explains are connected to it, have somehow survived the massive tidal wave he is able to call home.
   Knowing that the storm is getting worse and in the eye of the storm it is sucking down air -150 degrees and freezing everything solid, Jack tells his son to stay indoors and to build a fire. That is, until

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he and his two buddies can walk all the way from Washington D.C to Manhattan to retrieve them.
Wearing parkas and carrying a tent, the three head off to N.Y. At least they manage to drive all the way to Philadelphia before their truck can't go any farther. Too bad Jack had already told the President to write off everyone in the northern half of the country,

since the roads weren't impassible as he had claimed earlier.
   The second half of the movie deals primarily with the after effects of the storm and the trek to save the survivors. Those taking refuge in the library are forced to use the vending machines for food and burn books to keep them from freezing.
   If there hadn't been enough excitement from the storm itself, Emmerich decided to throw in a chase scene with a bunch of wolves that somehow survived the flood and want to attack Sam and his friends aboard a tanker frozen on the street. After managing to escape the wolves, they have a marvelous chase scene where Sam proves that he is faster than the wind, as he literally outruns the freezing air in the most ridiculous chase scene ever captured on film. You actually see everything behind him freezing as he escapes back into the library. His father escapes the freezing wind by jumping through the ceiling of a restaurant and turning on some oven burners.
   Even though the United States is destroyed, it has a happy ending. The southern half of the U.S. has been evacuated, but the third world countries have let them in only after they forgive all foreign debt owed to them. Not that it mattered anyways, since there is no U.S. left to collect the money.
   Sam finds his son and they all are happy and hugging. Military helicopters then come to pick them up and all the rest of the survivors in Manhattan. Probably made Jack feel a little stupid that he didn't think of riding up in the helicopter after the storm instead of walking through the middle of it and arriving at approximately the same time. Who cares if he lost one of his party on the walk and that millions of people are killed worldwide. He made up with his son, and that's all that matters.