Review of The Day After Tomorrow (2004) by Filipeneto — 12 Feb 2018

Emmerich tried again...

In this film, directed by Roland Emmerich (the man who likes to destroy the Earth again, and again, and again), the Earth is sent back to the Ice Age by an enormous system of storms that freezes almost all the globe. In the midst of all, one paleoclimatologist (this exist?) Seeks to save his son, trapped by snow in New York.

In a world obsessed with global warming, Roland Emmerich heard of global cooling theories and the threat of a new ice age and seems to have been interested. Nothing special about a man who already has in his curriculum about six attempts to destroy the planet (in movies, of course). Of course, this kind of film, which was very usual in the seventies, is popular again thanks to the elaborate computer visual effects that allows them to have. Nothing more than that. Therefore, in these new disaster movies, the most basic mistakes (like plot errors, scientific mistakes and improbable facts) are growing and taking disastrous proportions. That's what happens in this film, where the start is going well, with some logic and an interesting plot. It is from the middle of the film that things start to go wrong, with situations increasingly senseless to happen with the characters. It's nonsense destroying the film, as snow destroyed New York (New York is always in these films... just in case, I wouldn't live there)! Despite these flaws that the smartest audience will quickly detect, the film has a good cast (led by Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum), the characters were developed in a positive way and there's some romantic scenes that soften the tension of events.

"The day after Tomorrow" is a film that is able to entertain the audience. It's not an exceptional or particularly striking film and definitely is not better than many similar films of the seventies (only on the photography and visual effects) but it's not so bad that should be thrown in the trash.