Movie Review for "The Day After Tomorrow"

Director: Roland Emmerich
Written by: Roland Emmerich
Runtime: 124 min
Rated: PG-13 for intense situations of peril.
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Ian Holm

Along with the several million other spectators across the globe I trekked to my nearest UGC cinema to see the by-now-quite-notorious-movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which came out in cinemas here on Wednesday (Notice they didn't put "Starring:..." on the posters... I wonder why? =). Since it was a movie directed by Roland Emmerich who had already directed the likes of "Independence Day" and "Gozilla" I figured that it would be a large-scale thrill-filled on-your-edge movie. I wasn't dissapointed. Dennis Quaid did a good job playing the climatologist and caring father Jack Hall who finds out on a trip to the Antarctic that the weather is about to change-- drastically, and for the worse. Obviously his words fall upon deaf ears, including those of Cheney-look-alike vice president (played by Kenneth Welsh). Luckily theres also Terry Rapson (Ian Holm), another climatologist who comes to his rescue with the first of the several people who come to back him up, and soon enough the weather starts going amok. Hail falls on Tokyo, (why is it that all Japanese actors in foreign films have a wierd way of speaking Japanese??), hurricanes start whipping up across islands, and several tornadoes ravage Los Angeles (not without much fanfare). Oh, and theres also Jack's son who's on a decathalon trip to New York when Manhattan itself comes under a tsunami that swallows the city and leaves its people stranded in the public library (which, I having visited, looks nothing of the sort, and does not even face a street as it does in the movie. Its main entrance faces the side of 42nd street, not up Fifth Avenue. But I'll have to check into that). A huge freezing storm sets in, freezing New York and eventually forcing the President (who looks incredibly like Al Gore, or at least someone who looks like a president, played by Perry King) to evacuate everyone in the Southern states. And where do they head to? Mexico! The most hilarious part of the film was seeing everyone crossing the Rio Grande the wrong way and hearing that the Mexican government allows the American exodus as part of a negotiation of the US forgiving "all Latin-American debts". Then, inevitably Jack Hall sets out to New York to save his son (and the girl his son happens to like, as well as a few other people). There are a few heart-wrenching moments, but then again theres always this thought in the back of the mind that everything in the movie is sort of expected before it happens, which is the sad part. I'm giving this movie a rating of four stars of five, primarily because the movie effects were breath-taking and dynamic, the topics are a great thing to start a dinner conversation, and because Dennis Quaid hasn't quite lost his flair after all these years. Its just too bad that things seem to go just a tad too well in this movie. Oh, and the only "foul" word is bastard, as quoted by the English in their helicopters (whose engines freeze in the storms) on their way to evacuate the royal family from Volgard castle. Its worth your money to see this movie.

Written on Sunday, May 30 at 9:06 PM