Cheap The Day After Tomorrow (Widescreen Edition) (DVD) (Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum) (Roland Emmerich) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Day After Tomorrow (Widescreen Edition)

Incredible special effects highlight dumb movie
The Day After Tomorrow should be seen on the large screen. The special effects are utterly fantastic. It was fun to watch Los Angeles destroyed by tornados and New York City covered by freezing ice. Director Roland Emmerich, however, should have picked a script with better dialogue. Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum and Sela Ward are provided lines so lame that I sensed they barely uttered them with a straight face. These people are supposedly suffering from hunger and the pain of losing loved ones. They always, though, appear well fed and fairly cheerful. What about having to go to the toilet? Sanitation concerns are ignored. A vending machine containing snacks is left untouched until the main characters think of breaking into it. Is everybody else seeking shelter in the huge library a complete idiot? As a global warming propaganda vehicle, this film fails miserably. I totally forgot The Day After Tomorrow's political message. The story line is too ridiculous to be effective. Escapist movies still have to be somewhat logical. Emmerich seems so preoccupied with the weather disasters that he barely had time for anything else. Perhaps he should have focussed on these scenes and allowed someone else to direct the rest of the movie? Did his ego get in the way? Why didn't anyone say something? Couldn't the producer sense that something was wrong?

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Makes so sense. But it's pure entertainment and I loved it.
First of all, understand this is science fiction. Second of all, understand that the plot is simple and silly. And third of all, realize that this $125 million film has given work to hundreds of people in the special effects business.

Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. And if it's in an air-conditioned theater on a hot summer day, you'll enjoy it even more.

O.K., it's not great art. And Dennis Quaid, cast as "the scientist who nobody listens to until it's too late" has been seen in better roles. He's supposedly based in Washington DC and his 17-year old son, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is stuck in New York when the disaster hits. It's a whopping disaster too. The weather is going wacky. A tornado is destroying Los Angeles. And the "mother of all blizzards" is burying New York in a mountain of snow and ice. The temperature is dropping at the rate of 10 degrees a second. Global warming has caused a new ice age and everyone in the northern part of the world is freezing to death.

There's a whole bunch of people holed up in the New York Public library, most notably Jake Gyllenhaal and well as his girlfriend who needs some emergency medicine to save her. There's the librarian who reluctantly understands that they need to burn the books in order to survive. And then there is the homeless man and his dog who teaches the people how to put layers of paper inside their clothes in order to insulate themselves and keep warm.

There's a global emergency and half the United States has to be evacuated into Mexico. Of course the writers added humor and the audience got a chuckle watching Americans crossing the Rio Grande to get into Mexico illegally.

Anyway, Dennis Quaid decides to try to find his son in New York. And so he decides to walk on snowshoes.

Of course this makes so sense. But I didn't come to this film to see something that made sense. I came to see the special effects.

But, curiously, something interesting happened. Somewhere along the line I forgot to notice the special effects. All I saw was the city I love being destroyed. I couldn't help it. There were tears dripping down my face.

There's a happy ending of course. All the main characters live. The world will continue. And everyone will be more aware of the dangers of global warming.

And yes. I do recommend this film. Just know what you're in for before you walk into the theater.

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It's another disaster movie
Certainly, it is yet another disaster movie, but we film-goers have a huge appetite for disasters. The film makers will keep making them as long as we keep paying to watch them. In my opinion some reviewers have been too harsh about this one. It's not bad, as disaster movies go. There are some very good special effects that save it from being the unworthy crock some people are suggesting.

In this film, the Northern hemisphere is covered by big, rotating clouds - there are 3 of them: one for Canada/USA, one for Europe and one for Siberia. The heroes are American (of course) with a nod to a small knot of British climatologists (or meteorologists) shivering over their tea and biscuits in Scotland. The warnings about possible climate change, brought about by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and hacking and burning forests, had been largely ignored by those in the strongest position to do something about it. And now it's too late. The switch to colder global temperatures has been flipped. The genii is out of the bottle and cannot be put back. The course of events is inexorable. The polar ice begins to melt at an alarming rate. The Atlantic conveyor (the ocean current that carries warm water to the cold regions where it gets all cold and salty so that it sinks and flows back to the warmer regions) is altered when a critical desalination point is reached. Climate stability is lost. There are huge storms - unseasonable and in unexpected places. Great flocks of birds fill the sky over New York - a portent of doom - flying south. A huge dome of ocean crashes over Manhattan. Those who survive the drowning are subjected to blizzards and rapid freezing. Wolves stalk the streets. People who are able to, flee south, where they find the Mexican border closed to them. It all looks pretty grim. There's been a sudden catastrophic climate change and the planet is plunged into a new ice age.

The quality of the cinematography and CGI, as good as they are, don't make a good story unnecessary, but they still help the film to be very enjoyable despite a high degree of schmaltz. The wolves are obviously computer generated (just as well because one of them gets a series of vicious clouts with a torch and a couple of them have bone-crushing collisions with walls and doors) but the flocks of birds and the movement of water, snow and ice are very realistic. The acting and the dialogue are not bad but the human interest element of the story really is a bit sickly. Now that I've watched the film a few times, I find I just skip all the emotional goo and go straight to the entertaining parts - mostly the special effects. Examples that impressed and entertained me (the sort of clips they show on the trailers):

• the breaking off of the Larsen B Antarctic ice shelf
• the rash of tornados tearing Los Angeles apart
• the huge wave that crashed over the statue of liberty and into New York
• the quick freeze flag
• the discovery in the library of a section of publications on tax law that nobody - not even the most devoted bibliophile - would mind burning in order to keep warm

There are a few extras. The commentaries are fairly interesting. The trailers are useful. I now know that I want to see "I Robot" and also "Alien vs. Predator" looks interesting though we only see the 'creature workshop' and not any part of the film. The menu programme on this single disc edition is not too good. If you press the menu button, instead of going back to the menu, as happens with most DVDs, this takes you straight back to the interminable warnings about pirating films and you can't skip them. So best not to press the menu button if you just wanted to select a different scene for example. On balance, I think this is an entertaining film and well worth the price. If you like disaster films, you should enjoy this.