The Day After Tomorrow: Running from Air
Published June 20, 2004
You can complain about the plot and performances in these movies but their very badness has always been part of the jaded fun. Dennis Quaid as the scientist has the molar-grinding action-hero role along the lines of Burt Lancaster in Airport, Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure, Charlton Heston in Earthquake and Airport '75, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno, and George C. Scott in The Hindenburg, but not these actors' outsized presence that did what could be done to justify the scale of those movies. Apparently having lived out the stormy, self-destructive youth that his sizzling tiger eyes foretold in Breaking Away (1979) and The Right Stuff (1983) (while somehow maintaining his Dorian Gray bod), Quaid has become an honest actor but an uncertain one. He doesn't generate excitement as he did when young, but he does throw off vibes: the desperate and confused air of those Hollywood stars who have fallen farther than they had ever risen.
Jake Gyllenhaal as his son has the freshness and grace Quaid lacks, but what can he do, burning books in the NYPL and waiting to be rescued by his Dad? (In The Day After Tomorrow the damsel is a guy.) Gyllenhaal even has to be told by his rival how to approach the girl they both have a crush on. Unfortunately, the supporting players don't reach the level of camp attained by Shelley Winters, going on about her grandson in Israel, or Ernest Borgnine, calling Hackman "Preacher Man," in The Poseidon Adventure, and there's nothing like the great moment in that movie when Pamela Sue Martin whips off her skirt, revealing a convenient pair of hot pants, in preparation for climbing the Christmas tree to safety. The best you get is a sentimental comic turn by Glenn Plummer as a homeless man who shelters with the people in the Library. It combines Helen Hayes's "cute" old lady con artist in Airport (an Oscar winner, I remind anyone who thinks the Academy rewards merit) with Walter Matthau's capering souse in Earthquake. The Day After Tomorrow doesn't even engage you enough to make you despise it. I found about a third of the way through that I wasn't looking at the screen between special effects.
That pretty much covers the movie as entertainment. As a cultural product it has quite another set of problems. Worldwide ecological disruption is a fear that liberals want us to take more seriously before it's too late (hence the urgent title of this movie). But the movie's fears don't run deep enough. When everything north of the latitude of Tennessee starts to freeze, Americans cross into Mexico in such numbers that Mexico closes its borders to us after which American refugees abandon their cars and walk across the river to enter illegally. A pretty good joke. The President doesn't make it, however, and the VP runs the government from the embassy in Mexico City. (The VP is the villain of the piece, having refused to believe Quaid's predictions and evacuate the country. He is, however, redeemed by the disasters--Dick Cheney allowed to survive on the condition that he become an eco-liberal.)
- The Day After Tomorrow: Running from Air
- Published: June 20, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Action, Video: Drama, Video: SF, Video: Suspense and Mystery
- Writer: Alan Dale
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Comments on this articleComments
Setting aside the characterization of my comments about liberals as bitching and whining, you seem to make the assumption that what a person writes about a movie has to be categorized either as a movie review or as political commentary, but not both. Why?
Well, when I see that a movie review seems to be some sort of political commentary, it turns me off from seeing what the author has to say about the movie. I see enough political shit on tv and in the paper that when I go to the movie, I want to be entertained. I higly doubt that when people made The Day After Tomorrow, they were trying to make some telling political stand: They wanted to make as much money as they can with a disaster flick. Just because it happens to be about global warming doesn't make it a political statement
I actually put this phrase in the review--"That pretty much covers the movie as entertainment. As a cultural product it has quite another set of problems."--specifically to note when I was switching from aesthetics to politics. I guess you should have stopped reading then. Still, I'm not convinced everyone will share your extremely limited notion of what constitutes a movie review.
"your extremely limited notion "
Actually, I don't have a "limited notion". Maybe I am just sick of politics in every damn thing. Still, I am sure there will be many on here who appreciate your liberal bashing... This is blogcritics after all.. the haven for the right. I just kinda wish this post had been in et cetera... then I would have known what I was reading before I started. Please excuse my stupidty. *rolls eyes*
QUOTE
Well, when I see that a movie review seems to be some sort of political commentary, it turns me off from seeing what the author has to say about the movie.
UNQUOTE
The same can be said about the movie itself. If the movie is an obvious attempt at political proaganda it should also be avoided.
Day After Tomorrow is a fairly awful film. I had the good fortune of viewing it with an audience that loved the damn thing. And it WAS entertaining in parts. The movie bumbles through inconsistent political stands, poor plot turns, predictable character speeches and agonizingly derivative scenes. Roland Emmerich doesn't really make films more than he comes up with "neat" special effects ideas, and then plops a weak movie upon them. He rips off Godzilla, War of the Worlds, The Right Stuff, Star Wars, Earthquake, Twister and any number of past, superior films, putting together a predictable patchwork quilt knowing full well that the audience dynamic numbers 70% kids who don't have the brains to know any film made before the year 2000. It's all about putting together a nice FX package and racing to the bank to deposit the bucks.
Roland Emmerich is a proud graduate of the Jerry Bruckheimer school of commercial filmmaking. Give the kids generic explosions because they are too dumb to know any better.
That being said, I enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow though suspect if I viewed it a second time on DVD would likely hate it. That also being said, I enjoyed Alan's terrific review and his comparisons to many of the great disaster films of the 1970s......
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so was this a movie review or a bitch and wine fest about liberals? Hard to tell.