Great special effects save movie from disaster

Ham-fisted director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “Godzilla”) once again brings us an over-the-top disaster film.

Sadly, “The Day After Tomorrow” is not only a disaster film, but a disastrous one as well; one that may serve to give strength to the very group of people it seems to be trying to indict. Conspiracy theorists might even put forth the scenario wherein Emmerich was paid off by the anti-environmental movement to make a film that, while seeming to warn of the dangers inherent in the burning of fossil fuels and the effects of global warming, in reality tends to make environmentalists look silly.

There have already been several cable news shows (you know, the “fair and balanced” ones) featuring scientists funded by conservative organizations such as The Heritage Foundation and The Cato Institute going head-to-head with their left-leaning, environmentally conscious counterparts. Emmerich himself was on one of these programs and didn’t do the cause much good. He used the word “like” (as in, ...“it’s, like, you know”) more than a valley girl in 1986.

Science and politics aside, much of the film is just laughably bad. Dennis Quaid is a fine and affable actor, but is he believable as a paleoclimatologist? (As if anyone knows how a stereotypical paleoclimatologist would be.)

The film’s dialogue is leaden and the personal stories are preposterous.

On the other hand, Emmerich is top-notch when it comes to visual effects. Even though computer-generated imagery has been around for a while now, it’s still thrilling to see L.A. being torn apart by massive tornadoes, Tokyo being pummeled with giant hailstones and New York City being hit by a tidal wave and then fast frozen.

It’s thrilling, I guess, to those who like to watch civilization as we know it coming to an end. And I’m not opposed to that, if the script is good.

Jack Hall (Quaid) begins the film at an international conference dealing with environmental matters: Global warming, the Kyoto Accord, etc.

He tries to explain the seemingly paradoxical fact that global warming will bring us into a new ice age.

One of the main naysayers is Vice President Becker of the United States, who looks remarkably like Dick Cheney.

Ridiculed – even by leaders of his own country – Hall’s words fall on deaf ears.

In the meantime, strange things are afoot in the world of weather. We know this because everyone involved in “The Day After Tomorrow” tends to watch The Weather Channel 24/7. Super cells are forming where they shouldn’t be, and the first definite sign of trouble is the aforementioned destruction of Los Angeles.

The action scenes are intercut with the personal lives of Jack, his estranged wife and their brilliant college-aged son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is off to New York to compete in a “college bowl” competition. This is the first of many plot devices that are so glaring we immediately know something bad is going to happen.

When the film deliberately has a ship float down a flooded Manhattan street, when the wolves escape the zoo, when Sam’s love interest cuts her leg ... the scenes seem to shout, “Hey! Look at me! This will cause conflict later in the film!”

Sam, and everyone else in New York City, witnesses a storm like no one has ever seen.

Then the cold sets in. Sam, his teammates, a few librarians and a homeless man with dog (there’s a reason he’s here) – take shelter at the NYC public library.

They burn books to keep warm. Sam also manages to get in touch with his dad who tells him to stay put. “I’m coming for you, ” Dad says.

While Jack Hall has trudged across the polar ice caps many times, it seems utterly far-fetched that he could snowshoe from Washington, D.C., to Manhattan during the most violent – and coldest – storm the earth has seen in some 10,000 years.

But that he does.

Thinking about the dialogue makes it worse. Jack explains to colleagues how the ocean currents depend on a mix of “fresh” and “salt” water and someone says, “Of course. We all know that.”

Jack: “I think we’ve hit a critical desalinization point.”

Scientist: “That would explain the extreme weather.”

Ahhhh! What can explain a movie with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars that relies on dialogue like that?

But, the special effects are great.

I’m saddened because, if the truth be known, I’m one of those environmental wackos, and I truly believe we’ve got some problems ahead. “The Day After Tomorrow” makes a mockery of this very serious situation.