Art Bell was right! The conspiracy nut and radio talk-show host, probably huddled in his secret bunker somewhere in the desert outside Las Vegas, is listed as an inspiration for the global-warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, thanks to his book, The Coming Global Superstorm, co-written with another keen scientific mind and self-alleged alien abductee Whitley Strieber. German director Roland Emmerich, who rained full-scale destruction on the United States to great box-office success in Independence Day, and rained slightly smaller-scale destruction on New York City to great box-office failure in Godzilla, now gets to rain massive-scale destruction on the entire world in Tomorrow, to decent effect and potentially massive box-office success.
Wonky science aside, this is exactly what you want from a disaster movie. Even the science is close enough to sounding real that you leave the theater wondering, at least for a moment, if the events of the film aren't in some way plausible. Those events involve a monumental shift in the world's climate, thanks to the unexpected acceleration of global warming. Instead of bringing on a new Ice Age in centuries, it happens in a matter of days, and at first only paleoclimatologist (try saying that three times fast) Jack Hall understands what's going on. The Dirty Harry of meteorology, Jack (Dennis Quaid) is a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, mouthing off to the Dick Cheney-look-alike vice president and being chastised by his by-the-book boss.
MOVIE BOX |
What was in the air during the 1970s that made such fertile ground for disaster movies? Was it the disco music? The energy crisis? Nixon? Whatever the reason, George Kennedy figured highly in it. Just to prove our unbiasedness, we've also thrown in a couple from the late '90s.
Martin Stein |
Jack's son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a high-school smart-ass who takes after his dad, though the two of them don't always get along. Luckily, the world's about to end, giving them a chance to become closer. Sam heads to New York City to compete in an academic tournament, but he's really only there to follow Laura (Emmy Rossum), on whom he's got a crush. Of course, that's when the weather goes loopy, with tornadoes in Los Angeles, giant hail in Tokyo, flash-freezes in Scotland and a tidal wave headed right toward cute, tousle-headed Sam.
The first hour of Emmerich's film, focusing on the destruction for which he is so well-known, is exciting and well-crafted blockbuster entertainment. The disasters are suitably epic, the effects realistic enough to sustain suspension of disbelief, and the characters just fleshed-out enough for us to care whether they get obliterated or not. Like any good disaster movie, Tomorrow introduces handfuls of lesser characters only to summarily wipe them out, though Emmerich clearly has never met a stereotype he didn't like: The representative Japanese guy spends practically all of his barely five minutes of screen time on a cell phone; nearly the first words out of an English professor's mouth are "spot of tea;" and the LA character is introduced screwing a woman on his office couch.
The broad strokes are fine when the effects are more important than the characters, but by the film's second half, when the disposable people are all disposed of and we essentially are left with just Jack and Sam, the clichés aren't enough to sustain our interest. Jack embarks on a ridiculous quest through the storm, from Washington, D.C., to New York, to reach Sam, though what exactly he can do for his son once he arrives is never clear. At this point, the storm becomes mere window dressing for character development, and while Quaid and Gyllenhaal both give decent performances, Emmerich and co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff don't give them more than a few basic traits to build on. There also isn't any tension in Jack's quest, and since by then most of the peripheral characters have been killed off, the amount of suspense drops almost as quickly as the temperature.
No longer working with longtime writing and producing partner Dean Devlin, Emmerich makes Tomorrow much less of a celebration of good ol' American values than Independence Day or his treacly Mel Gibson Revolutionary War dud, The Patriot. There are a few well-placed jibes at the U.S., even, as the Cheney stand-in acts as puppet-master to the president and ignores warnings about environmental catastrophe. In the film's best gag, thousands of American refugees illegally cross the border into Mexico to escape the storm.
This isn't a film about politics though, no matter how much Al Gore or Art Bell might wish otherwise. By the end, there's still plenty of the world left for Emmerich to destroy; his characters and politics are not nearly as sturdy. It's an action movie, and as long as it focuses on action, it's a thrilling ride.