The central contradiction of disaster movies since the 1970s has been that whereas the audience comes to the theater to see as much bad shit happen as possible, the story presupposes we'll be angry at whoever has allowed it to be so devastating for the people in harm's way. Not one of them has ever structured the story other than as melodramatic soap opera, but they work by spreading Schadenfreude on a spectacular scale. A single aircraft (Airport (1970), The Hindenburg (1975)) or ocean liner (The Poseidon Adventure (1972)) or skyscraper (The Towering Inferno (1974)) is fine, but an entire city is better (Earthquake (1974)), and the whole planet better yet (more typical of the current run, though I always liked When Worlds Collide (1951)). In The Day After Tomorrow the green-liberal nightmare of global warming leads to climatological disruption around the world (softball-sized hailstones in Tokyo; twisters in Los Angeles; a flash-freeze ice age in the UK; a tidal wave in Manhattan) and yet we're supposed to be worrying whether a handful of characters will "make it" or not.
The best news about The Day After Tomorrow is that the special effects are relatively sumptuous-looking, especially the tornadoes hoovering across L.A. The effects almost achieve what no disaster movie ever has--a sense of wonder at the power of natural forces. I recently rediscovered while camping that I can stare into a fire for hours on end; needless to say no one in The Towering Inferno makes a similar discovery. Despite a lot of rhetoric about respecting nature, the forces at work in these movies are purely "dramatic," not at all elemental, as in the work of the video artist Bill Viola.
The Day After Tomorrow almost achieves awe--e.g., when a janitor who's had headphones on during the tornadoes moves toward a door at the end of a hallway, or when a freighter floats up Fifth Avenue in front of the New York Public Library--but not quite, and the special-effects scenes actually don't have a very dramatic rhythm. The movie cuts in and out of them and you get less pure demolition than you may have thought you were paying for. It keeps hurrying back to the plot (Will the scientist who predicted it all reach Manhattan in time to save the son he's neglected?) and the usual kind of cheating-action-movie idiocy. My favorite trope in the latter line has long been shots of people running away from explosions, but The Day After Tomorrow may have set a new standard. First we have people running away from a tidal wave, but later we have people running away from frost that moves as fast as an ignited fuse. Running from frost ... that means running from a change in air temperature, right? ... which means ... running from the air?
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Article comments
1 - Ms. Tek
so was this a movie review or a bitch and wine fest about liberals? Hard to tell.
2 - Ms. Tek
*whine*
3 - Alan Dale
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?
4 - Ms. Tek
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
5 - Alan Dale
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.
6 - Ms. Tek
"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*
7 - marc
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.
8 - Chris Kent
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......