November 22, 2004
Movie Review: The Day After Tomorrow
Or, my critique on the Hollywood Blockbuster
But how could global warming bring on the next Ice Age? But why are they burning books when they could be burning furniture? But I thought wolves are scavengers and don't normally attack people? Shouldn't tital waves travel faster than that? How does the North Atlantic current cause gigantic tornadoes in L.A.?
Turn off the brain. These aren't the right questions to be asking while watching this movie (from the director of Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Patriot). There is absolutely no point in questioning the science of The Day After Tomorrow, or look for plot holes, or wonder exactly why those wolves hadn't frozen to death. As Stephen Hunter says in his review of the soon-to-be-Classic National Treasure, you've got to view these "films" as the "movie equivalent of comfort food: Think of it as a plate of gray roast beef, beige mashed potatoes and chartreuse peas all smothered in sepia gravy served on Wonder Bread in a diner somewhere between East Jonesborough and Potawatomi Run. Expect indigestion, expect cholesterol, expect little greasy Jujubes in your teeth for months and you can have a damned good time."
For a bad Hollywood blockbuster, I'd say this one was pretty good. A good bad movie. Seriously. I wasn't expecting an Oscar-perfomance from any of these normally good actors (Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, even Dennis Quaid I don't mind), but there was at least an attempt at some kind of development and it didn't get too sentimental. Most of the situations avoided the "mini-crises" pattern of one small problem after another (which made me hate Armageddon) and only one time did I find it impossible to suspend what limited scientific knowledge I have for a purely Hollywood thrill.
Yes, the movie did get moralistic at the end. Yes, there was a heroic monologue showing us that third world countries were better than us and we should stop abusing oil or else (no, the movie had nothing to do with either of these issues). Sure, you could pick this movie apart until you were blue in the face, but what's the point, right? No one's going to watch this movie and look for any higher meanings. But no one munches on Mike 'n' Ikes for sustenance, either.
Still... can one really outrun cold?
gabriel at November 22, 2004 03:00 PM
'A good bad movie.' I may want to see it now. I would never pay $10 to see it in theatres but now that I know it's good/bad I might just rent it. Sometimes your brain needs candy.
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Stephen at November 23, 2004 10:01 PM
I don't know. I really didn't even think it was all that good a bad movie. I really just thought it was pretty much just bad. I think I might have been able to suspend my disbeleif enouph if it hadn't been for that part with the really fast moving deadly cold. That was just weird, and beyond my threashold for such things. I just didn't really see much to really enjoy there, even for a bad movie. They just didn't really do anything all that interesting with the characters, and the main problems they were in weren't really all the interesting to me. I do agree that it did avoid the problem of the "one mini-problem after another" thing of Armageddon, but saying a movie is slightly better than that peice of crap is hardly an endorsement.
There are bad movies that I liked/enjoyed, but this was not one of them.
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