The Day After Tomorrow

Believe it or not, some people actually thought that this--by a comfortable margin the goofiest movie of the year--might be viewed as a piece of environmental advocacy. Even the studio took great pains to make sure that everyone realized that it was just a summer popcorn movie, for crying out loud! Well, those who were concerned that the picture would galvanize the global community into banning fossil fuels immediately needn't have worried. If anything, “The Day After Tomorrow” sets the environmental movement back about twenty years, because it makes global warming seem about as imminent a threat as the aliens in director Roland Emmerich's “Independence Day.” The only thing that TDAT seems to be advocating is that people in catastrophic situations say and do unbearably stupid things. The actors (including Dennis Quaid as a stoic geek-turned-hero, and Sela Ward as his saintly doctor wife) are on hand mostly to fill time between the special weather effect set-pieces, which, in all fairness, are pretty fun to watch. As a time killer, the movie is harmless enough, but I doubt Emmerich and his gang realized just how unintentionally funny it would be. Spouting utterly unconvincing scientific gobbledygook, and struggling shamelessly and futilely to generate some empathy for the characters and their awful predicaments, the movie is like a 50's-era flick with better effects, all grown up with absolutely no place to go.