Le Jour d'après

Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow is one of those textbook disaster flicks where every recognizable element is in full swing: determined scientist, sure of his curveball theories that no one else buys, saddled with a dysfunctional family and a clock that's quickly ticking down towards some looming cataclysm, in this case severely bat tempered weather. It's cliche after cliche, but this is one of the ones that works, and I have a theory why. These days it seems like the formula for the disaster film is pretty dead, or at least doesn't carry the same magic it did throughout the 90's and early 00's.

Stuff like San Andreas, 2012, Geostorm (shudder) just feel dead on arrival, and instead we go back and revisit things like Armageddon, Independence Day, and for me, ones like this. There's a quality, a feel for time and place that got lost somewhere along the way as time passed in Hollywood, and this is one of the last few that serve as a milestone as to where that happened. The first half or so is cracking stuff, followed by a slightly underwhelming final act. Dennis Quaid is the scientist who gets all in a huff about an extreme weather front that's apparently barrelling towards the east coast, threatening to give the whole region one wet day in the park. There's an exaggerated halfwit Vice President (Kenneth Welsh) who scoffs at him, an excitable veteran professor (Bilbo Baggins) who eagerly supports him, and an estranged family right in the storm's crosshairs who he must rescue. The special effects are neat when the maelstrom slams into New York like a battering ram, pushing over buildings with walls of water and chucking hurricanes all about the place. Quaid's wife (Sela Ward) and wayward son (Jake Gyllenhaal) are of course stuck in this mess, as he races to find out what's causing it, and how to escape. The initial scenes where it arrives are big screen magic, especially when Gyllenhaal's girlfriend (Emmy Rossum) is chased down main street by a raging typhoon and barely scapes into a building, a breathless showcase moment for the film. The second half where the storm levels off isn't as engaging, despite attempts to throw in extra excitement, such as wolves, which I still can't quite figure out the origin of, despite watching the film a few times now. Holed up inside a library, it's a long waiting game in the cold dark where the writing and character development is spread a bit thin for the time they have to kill, but what can you expect here. Should have thrown in a T Tex or some ice dragons to distract us from sparse scripting. Still, the film gets that initial buildup deliciously right, the nervous windup to all out chaos, the editing between different characters and where they are when the monsoon shows up, and enough panicky surviving to make us thankful for that cozy couch and home theatre system all the more. One of the last of the finest, in terms the genre.

Honestly I love this movie. No matter what I'm doing if I see this on tv I go ahead and grab a drink and put my feet up. Don't watch this expecting realism. Just watch it for what it is - a disaster movie that suspends reality and science to reunite a father and his son during the storm of the ages.

The Day After Tomorrow is not a bad movie by all means. In fact, it's an uneven but decent film. The film does start off absolutely brilliantly, with a wonderful idea for a story and truly spectacular special effects. As a matter of fact, the whole film is well worth watching for the special effects alone. The acting is not too bad; Jake Gyllanhaal is rather bland, but Dennis Quaid is a superb lead. Plus Emmy Rosum looks positively radiant and Ian Holm is as reliable as ever. The direction from Roland Emmerich was surprisingly good, there have been times when I have found his direction too murky and unfocused, but no it was above decent here.

However, the second half isn't as impressive. Whereas the first half is very like a typical disaster movie, the second half for me as it focused on the rescue mission felt more of a thriller. The screenplay in general could have done with more precision and focus too, there is good interplay sometimes but on the whole I found the screenplay and some of the characters underdeveloped. My main problem though with The Day After Tomorrow was the pace, for my liking it was too leisurely and too stodgy.

All in all, uneven it is but it is a decent disaster movie. The first half I can watch again and again, but the second half for me was a bit of a letdown. 7/10 Bethany Cox

After years of warning about global warning, Jack Hall is horrified to find all his predictions coming true much faster than he could have imagined. Hail stones the size of footballs decimate cities, typhoons destroy Los Angeles and New York becomes flooded. As the big freeze crosses the northern hemisphere, a small group of survivors try to fend off the cold as the world prepares for a dramatic change in the world order.

This film may be a modern blockbuster but in almost everyway it is a 1970's disaster movie where an event happens after some build up and we then spend the rest of the film watching the survivors trying to, well, survive. In that regard the film carries all the usual problems that the genre carries but happily benefits from the fact that the effects are much better than 1970's movies could manage. For this reason the first hour is great – it has dramatic pace, is involving and looks fantastic even if we have seen it before in different variations (how many times has New York been destroyed now?). However after the sheer global terror is pretty much finished we suddenly become much more small scale and the film looses much of it's impact and it's pace. After the initial danger has passed the film uses illogical and silly plot devices to put the survivors at risk – a cold eye of a storm, blood infections, creeping ice and wolves are among the problems. While this is OK on a genre level it doesn't compare to the first hour and it gets a little dull and plodding at times.

The clichés are all present and correct: the politicians, the upright scientists, the sacrifice, the daring rescues and so on. It's fair to say that if you are looking for more than a basic script then you will be looking in the wrong place here. All this film does is to provide spectacle and moments of dramatic action – if you want to think about it then you will only hurt your enjoyment of the action. The film tries to deliver an environmental message but in a way this film will not help the environmental movement because it is too exaggerated to be taken seriously (like the idea of Celtic and Man Utd reaching the Champions League final – during this season? Please!), however it does include several surprisingly barbed attacks on the US administration (could the VP look any more like Cheney?). Just a shame that the film message is delivered with all the subtlety that Segal showed when he did something similar in his environmental action film On Deadly Ground.

The script doesn't really create characters either and it means we don't care that much about what happens to them in the final hour (countless millions are dead for goodness sake!). The dialogue in the first hour is nicely gruff and scientific and very genre but the second hour is more human and the lines aren't suited for that – not even in the hands of an impressive number of good actors. I like Quaid and he is a good lead here, he gets the good scientific stuff and only is lumbered with the rather silly notion of walking to New York from Washington. Gyllenhaal must have upset legions of cult fan boys by appearing in a big budget movie but he does OK with the role (despite looking too old to be in school). The rest of the cast are fairly mixed but, as with the genre, they are just filled even if some are good. Welsh is good even if he was cast for his similarity to Dick Cheney, Holm adds a small bit of dignity in his role as well as being supported by the very fine actor Lester in a minor role. Faces like Sanders, Mihok and a few others don't really matter as they are merely victims waiting for their turn to be used for dramatic effect.

Overall the first hour of this film is good on a blockbuster level, but it blows it's wad too early (don't ya hate it when that happens?!) and is left with a second hour that is right out of the 1970's with all the weaknesses that that entails. Generally I enjoyed the film because I was just expecting a big noisy movie to pass a few hours – bad script, no characters and lots of clichés? Why would I be surprised by that? It's par for the course and you should not watch this if you know these aspects will annoy you. As it is, it's an average film but one that is noisy and spectacular enough to pass muster in the summer blockbuster stakes.

How many times do I need to read other's reviews on disaster films before I remember most people on here writing these think they are actual film critics? It is a disaster movie. Yes, the science is terrible. Yes the coincidences are fantastical. If you watch these for ground breaking stories with rich plots, or for an Oscar worthy performance by one of the actors, then you are watching these for the wrong damn reasons. This movie shows a future where due to the rise in global temperatures, a modern ice age is triggered. How it is ushered in is by these violent, giant hurricane-like storms that cause flash freezing, and bring in a myriad of disasters with them. These include tsunamis and blizzards that drop so many feet of snow that people are walking level with the signs on the interstate that you would normally drive under. It also tries to throw in a lot of relatable human elements, such as the struggle of a man that is an absentee parent because of his job, trying to connect with his son, a lonely boy dying of cancer, and just the human death that this kind of disaster would bring. Do not watch this for the science, though I do feel that they had the causation of another ice age correct. Do not watch this for deep plot. Watch this for the enjoyable ride on which it takes you.