Review
Review Date: 28-May-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
On the surface, Roland Emmerich's "The Day After Tomorrow" contains a surprising amount of preaching for a summer action flick. By the time it reaches its closing shot of Earth, the northern hemisphere buried under a fatal, man-inflicted coat of ice and snow, the audience has ingested (or at least been offered) a good strong dose of environmental doomsaying. Yet if people chafe at getting a moral with their CGI effects, I suggest that the green with which Emmerich is truly concerned shades more toward mint than grass. He is surely savvy enough to know that humans, by nature, are turned on by self-affliction, and that while we all claim to want to lose weight and save the planet for our children, what we really want is to go out in a combustion of titanic gluttony, to defy our inescapable weaknesses by indulging in them with gleeful, life-affirming hubris. "The Day After Tomorrow" isn't great escapism or a strong argument for electric cars, but it does emphasize what I have suspected all along: as a society and as a race, we like to get spanked.
The Hammy Catastrophe Movie is one genre whose predictable plot and stock characters I actually enjoy (as in "Armageddon" and Emmerich's "Independence Day"), and "The Day After Tomorrow" finds modest success where it sticks to the formula. The movie takes place over a couple of weeks during which the Earth suddenly undergoes a massive climatological shift brought about by global warming. Sounding the call just ahead of the storm is a scientist played by Dennis Quaid, who, like all gorgeous middle-aged men in the movies, has ruefully let his career separate him from his family. (Sela Ward delivers yet another Sexy Mother performance as the missus, while up-and-comer Jake Gyllenhaal makes for a sympathetic son but an unconvincing high school student.) While Quaid bonds with the requisite ensemble of ethnically diverse colleagues, his son and a few others take refuge in the New York Public Library to grapple with the forces of nature (such as cold, snow, social inequity, and hormones) until he can come and save them. Meanwhile, Japanese businessmen get flattened by hailstones, oil tankers are grounded in city streets, and the President of the United States orders an evacuation to Mexico, causing an unprecedented southerly crossing of the Rio Grande.
This all provides a decent excuse for eye-opening visuals and sappy interludes, but the premise of "The Day After Tomorrow" cannot support a well-rounded adventure picture, and Emmerich knows it. Unlike asteroids or aliens, tidal waves and arctic temperatures cannot be defeated by the pluck and ingenuity of mankind; once people have brought these blights upon themselves, they have to live (or die) with them. The triumphs upon which the film hinges, therefore, feel small and more than usually contrived, as when wolves are introduced for a clumsy, horror-movie effect. Even the ending isn't very climactic (though it's certainly climatic), since it ties a couple of bows but leaves a lot of loose ends.
But in lieu of a big, flag-waving moment of victory, we get the moral and the spanking. Having built up a situation where the heroes are simply those who can survive, Emmerich looks to the overall impact of the tale for payoff. Quaid's character has neglected his son for years and only puts real heart into their relationship when he thinks the boy is dead or dying. The U. S. Vice President (Kenneth Welsh), once a sneering disbeliever who valued the economy above ecology, must accept the terrible responsibility of admitting his mistake. Ostensibly, they represent fools who don't believe that problems staring them in the face really pose a threat. More importantly for the movie's box office, they represent the common human impulse to live for the moment and let the future be damned. The movie itself seeks to capitalize on the very thing it appears to lament. The rush of the asthmatic's cigarette, the teenager's high-speed joy ride, the heart patient's pint of Ben & Jerry's: it's fun to watch New York City get wiped out spectacularly because we know we're asking for it. Trashing the planet wouldn't be nearly as interesting to worry about if we didn't think the consequences were going to be huge; to live like a god, you have to die like one.
When I walked out of the theater after the movie, an earnest activist handed me a pamphlet on global warming. (The sky, dark and raining when I entered, was now a suspicious blue.) I gave her a smile mixed with admiration and pity. We both might know what the day after tomorrow will bring, but I know (and Hollywood banks on the fact) that we cannot but rush recklessly to meet it.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
