kitty
05-29-2004, 09:47 AM
The Day After Tomorrow a Catastrophe
It's like Armageddon without the asteroid. Independence Day without the aliens. The Core without the digging.
The plot devices of the disaster movie has been done before, ad infinitum, and The Day After Tomorrow doesn't sway far from this proven formula. Dennis Quaid is Professor Jack Hall, an outspoken climatologist and environmentalist who, along with British professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) predict the coming of a new Ice Age because of global warming,
threatening massive portions of the planet.
Quaid is passable as the doomsday sayer who arrives too late, but, never having been a fan of Quaid's acting style, I found some of his over-the-top hysteria a little distracting in this film. Jake Gyllenhal, as Jack Hall's prodigy son, Sam, is similarly passable, but often
acts somewhat too blase about the whole predicament than was appropriate.
But the weakness of the film was not the acting, but the ambitious size of the cast. Many disaster films feel the need to incorporate large casts into their movies in order to capture the global scale of the threat -- however, the good ones know when to say when. They trim the cast down partway through the movie, and focus on developing a handful of three or four characters, so that the audience comes to empathize with their plight, and subsequently get drawn into their predicaments. The Day After Tomorrow set out to accomplish very little, if any, character development, and so the audience never ends up feeling for them. The movie feels cluttered with extras who serve no function, and could easily have been excised from the movie, such as Sam's preppie rival decathlon player, J.D. (Austin Nichols), who essentially gets dropped from the film partway through, without explanation.
Similarly, though I applaud the fact that Tamlyn Tomita showed herself in another major Hollywood film, her character, a Janet Tokada, a NASA hurricane specialist, feels flat, undeveloped, and useless and could have been cut out entirely. Another symptom of this problem is that many of the secondary characters seem to exist only to help Jack Hall and
his son -- there is no mention made of Sam's friends' families or what happened to them, nor do they ever show any particular hysteria over not being able to reach them or that they may have died in the weather changes that are plaguing the planet.
(Incidentally, Asian American activists may be "delighted" to know that the Japanese have the dubious pleasure of being the first people to be killed by the impending Ice Age.)
Critics have criticized The Day After Tomorrow for being unscientific and implausible, and I would have to agree. As much as global warming is a threat, (and MoveOn.org is having a field day sending operatives to screenings to pass out literature), the film almost does the issue a disservice by portraying the problem in such a sensationalist light. Naysayers and environmentalists are portrayed as villains and heroes, simplifying complicated issues of economics versus environment into a black and white issue, and even I, a fervent environmentalist, felt cheapened by this approach. Also, the filmmakers used the film as a vehicle to make other timely commentaries on the state of current affairs -- which, though funny, added to the feeling that the film was little more than a liberal propaganda piece.
Of course, very few audience members actually went to the film for all of the stuff I mentioned above. Let's not forget that the draw of this film is the special effects, and watching major American cities be decimated by various frightening meteorlogical phenomena. And to that end, The Day After Tomorrow is excellent. The CGI effects are, mostly, as visually enrapturing as they were advertised to be, though many of the
money shots were disappointingly released already via the trailer.
Yet, there's little substance behind the effects. Rupert Emmerich needs to stop with the huge disaster films - he seems to have thus far been coasting on good story premises and talented character actors than actual talent. As far as disaster movies go, The Day After
Tomorrow just blows.
It's like Armageddon without the asteroid. Independence Day without the aliens. The Core without the digging.
The plot devices of the disaster movie has been done before, ad infinitum, and The Day After Tomorrow doesn't sway far from this proven formula. Dennis Quaid is Professor Jack Hall, an outspoken climatologist and environmentalist who, along with British professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) predict the coming of a new Ice Age because of global warming,
threatening massive portions of the planet.
Quaid is passable as the doomsday sayer who arrives too late, but, never having been a fan of Quaid's acting style, I found some of his over-the-top hysteria a little distracting in this film. Jake Gyllenhal, as Jack Hall's prodigy son, Sam, is similarly passable, but often
acts somewhat too blase about the whole predicament than was appropriate.
But the weakness of the film was not the acting, but the ambitious size of the cast. Many disaster films feel the need to incorporate large casts into their movies in order to capture the global scale of the threat -- however, the good ones know when to say when. They trim the cast down partway through the movie, and focus on developing a handful of three or four characters, so that the audience comes to empathize with their plight, and subsequently get drawn into their predicaments. The Day After Tomorrow set out to accomplish very little, if any, character development, and so the audience never ends up feeling for them. The movie feels cluttered with extras who serve no function, and could easily have been excised from the movie, such as Sam's preppie rival decathlon player, J.D. (Austin Nichols), who essentially gets dropped from the film partway through, without explanation.
Similarly, though I applaud the fact that Tamlyn Tomita showed herself in another major Hollywood film, her character, a Janet Tokada, a NASA hurricane specialist, feels flat, undeveloped, and useless and could have been cut out entirely. Another symptom of this problem is that many of the secondary characters seem to exist only to help Jack Hall and
his son -- there is no mention made of Sam's friends' families or what happened to them, nor do they ever show any particular hysteria over not being able to reach them or that they may have died in the weather changes that are plaguing the planet.
(Incidentally, Asian American activists may be "delighted" to know that the Japanese have the dubious pleasure of being the first people to be killed by the impending Ice Age.)
Critics have criticized The Day After Tomorrow for being unscientific and implausible, and I would have to agree. As much as global warming is a threat, (and MoveOn.org is having a field day sending operatives to screenings to pass out literature), the film almost does the issue a disservice by portraying the problem in such a sensationalist light. Naysayers and environmentalists are portrayed as villains and heroes, simplifying complicated issues of economics versus environment into a black and white issue, and even I, a fervent environmentalist, felt cheapened by this approach. Also, the filmmakers used the film as a vehicle to make other timely commentaries on the state of current affairs -- which, though funny, added to the feeling that the film was little more than a liberal propaganda piece.
Of course, very few audience members actually went to the film for all of the stuff I mentioned above. Let's not forget that the draw of this film is the special effects, and watching major American cities be decimated by various frightening meteorlogical phenomena. And to that end, The Day After Tomorrow is excellent. The CGI effects are, mostly, as visually enrapturing as they were advertised to be, though many of the
money shots were disappointingly released already via the trailer.
Yet, there's little substance behind the effects. Rupert Emmerich needs to stop with the huge disaster films - he seems to have thus far been coasting on good story premises and talented character actors than actual talent. As far as disaster movies go, The Day After
Tomorrow just blows.