"Day After Tomorrow" review

from Variety

The Day After Tomorrow

reviewed by Todd McCarthy

A loose remake of "Independence Day""Independence Day" with weather as the villain rather than aliens, "The Day After Tomorrow" is a disarmingly pulpy, eye-popping disaster movie during its first half, and an increasingly dull survival melodrama during its second. With the muscular assistance of some spectacular special effects depicting the devastation of New York and Los Angeles in particular, this latest End of Western Civilization pop-culture artifact plays fast and loose with science and environmental theory to engineer a paranoid fantasy about global warming causing a new Ice Age. With media coverage already pushing "Is this possible?" angles, Fox can expect very warm early summer B.O.B.O. Stateside and even better results internationally (where it opens imminently in 110 markets) for this old-fashioned mankind-vs.-the-elements speculative fiction epic.

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These scenes, which begin with a tsunami all but engulfing the Statue of Liberty and then flooding Manhattan, are perhaps the most impressive in the picture. The frequent aerial views of water surging through the streets are eerie and dramatically convincing, and while some of the setups, with people running and cars and busses flipping, are virtually identical to those in "Independence Day," there's nothing in that film to match the shot that assumes the p.o.v. of a surfer atop a tidal wave as it surges through midtown. Pic's action-packed first hour ends with Hall ominously predicting, "In seven to 10 days, we'll be in a new Ice Age."

While there are some spectacular sights still in store, notably the freezing-to-the-cracking-point of the Empire State Building and other structures, second half quickly becomes a slog.

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Still, there are occasional little kicks to enjoy. Portrayal of the U.S. president (Perry King) is amusing; when confronted with the predicament, he immediately turns to the VP and asks, "What do you think we should do?" Better still is a subversive little plot twist that turns the historical immigration tables, with millions of Americans fleeing the unendurable weather by busting through the closed border with Mexico. And when the U.S. president finally goes on television at the end to report on the state of the nation, he does so on the Weather Channel.

"The Day After Tomorrow" goes beyond the far-fetched into the preposterous, but the first half delivers enough of what people want and expect from disaster pictures, and there are enough money-shot special effects, that auds probably will be more satisfied than not.

full Monty up at Variety's pay site: www.variety.com

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