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THE
DAY AFTER TOMORROW
4/10
USA
2004 : Roland EMMERICH : 124 mins
Climate-expert
Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) pieces together evidence that global warming
may be about to usher in a new ice age. His research is widely dismissed
until extremely dramatic weather-phenomena start wreaking havoc across
the globe. Los Angeles is devastated by massive tornadoes, while New York
is deluged by a colossal tidal-wave that leaves only handfuls of survivors
- including Jack's teenage son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who shelters in
the city's main public library. As a catastrophic freeze-up grips most
of the northern hemisphere and Americans flee south to warmer climes,
Jack sets out from Washington DC to walk north on a seemingly impossible
rescue-mission...
Strictly speaking,
The Day After Tomorrow should really be called 'The Day Before
Yesterday': the prologue features real-life events (collapse of Larson
B ice-shelf; Delhi climate talks) which took place in 2002, and everything
else unfolds (with ludicrous rapidity) within the next couple of months.
But as the title implies, the film is supposedly set in the imminent future,
depicting terrifying events which might just come true.
But after
a promisingly plausible beginning, director Emmerich rapidly spirals off
into the anything-goes territory of the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster where
believability is sacrificed in favour of eye-popping special effects.
While the issue it supposedly "explores" is all too pressing
and real, The Day After Tomorrow is really no more of a "wake-up
call" than Emmerich's previous big-budget millennial orgies of (Manhattan-centric)
destruction, 1996's smash-hit Independence Day and 2000's belly-flop
Godzilla.
We, and he,
have simply been down this apocalyptic road far too often - The Day
After Tomorrow essentially cobbles together elements of Twister,
Armageddon and (most of all) Deep Impact and, like those films,
only really flares to life during its dialogue-free set-pieces. As Los
Angeles and New York "get it", we marvel at how much CGI technology
can be bought for $150m these days - in what amounts to two full hours
of that TV staple, 'bad-weather porn,' these are the "money shots"
in more ways than one.
But everything
else is strictly and depressingly by-the-numbers: flat dialogue, clunky
bits-missing editing, predictable plotting, lazy characterisation, blaring
muzak, family-values guff ("I made my son a promise - I'm gonna keep
it!"), and shameless sentimentality, in the subplot involves a cancer-stricken,
Peter Pan-reading young moppet (Luke Letourneay). Ever the quintessential
Hollywood pro, Quaid retains his dignity in a thankless 'lead' role constantly
upstaged by the special effects - which run from convincing (the Manhattan
tsunami) to the ropey (a pack of all-too-visibly-CGI wolves).
Mopey Gyllenhaal,
however, looks much less happy with his lot - not for the first time,
he does little to justify his status among Hollywood's up-and-coming twentysomethings.
And Ian Holm's plot-mechanism British scientist Terry Rapson is saddled
with chunks of exposition designed to blind the viewer with (nonsensical)
science (an early bad sign: a computer diagram shows the 'normal' Gulf
Stream running north to south?!)
Frustratingly,
there are flashes of wit and intelligence in the mostly mechanical
and po-faced script (by Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff) which suggest
the existence of a sharper, more satirical movie buried deep among the
rewrites. American citizens fleeing across the border into a still-temperate
Mexico are welcomed as "refugees"; in flooded Manhattan,
a homeless man shows a mollycoddled brat how to keep warm and find food
- in a cash-strapped public-library which has replaced an employee-cafeteria
with an M&M-filled vending-machine. There's also an amusing debate
about book-burning, with two caricature-liberal types debating the merits
of Nietzsche - later, no less an artefact than a Gutenberg Bible makes
a cameo appearance.
But this is
really a dumb, lumbering behemoth of a blockbuster - and it's hard to
accept being lectured about global-warming by 20th Century Fox, a division
of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. If Fox and Murdoch really wanted
to spark a global debate, they'd could surely have come up with something
closer to 1962's chillingly effective nuclear-age-nightmare The Day
the Earth Caught Fire, which managed to be serious, thought-provoking
and scary while working as a character-driven suspense thriller with an
audaciously ambiguous finale.
The Day
After Tomorrow, however, contrives to pluck a single happy ending
out of the annihilation of countless millions, one that makes the whole
planet-wrecking business seem designed chiefly to forge a closer dialogue
between a workaholic parent and a disaffected teen. And, needless to say,
the cataclysms are only reported by News Corp's organs Fox News and Sky
News. While hiding behind a paper-thin mask of eco-concern, Murdoch and
his Fox minions are instead stoking up our fears, driven by the same blind
profit-seeking motives that brought us all to this sorry state in the
first place.
21st May,
2004
(seen 19th May : UCI Silverlink, North Tyneside : press show)
by Neil
Young
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