The Day After Tommorrow (2004)

1 Popcorn Box

This ridiculous film is so ludicrous that it's almost unwatchable.  The centuries-long effects of global warming take place instead in a few weeks instead of decades.  Scientifically laughable, the film fails to deliver on its sermon of avoiding fossil fuels and living in peace and happiness among the birds and the flowers, with solar plants and wind farms.

I give films somewhat of a break when it comes to plausibility.  I know that time travel cannot exist, but a film like Looper (2012) or Superman (1978) can be entertaining in spite of that.  The Day After Tomorrow, though, fails again and again on matters of science, so as to make it virtually unwatchable.

I could go on and on about the bad science in this movie, but a few examples will suffice.  Tornadoes in Los Angeles; yeah, maybe, but three at once?  That's pretty rare (I seen examples of only two at a time).  And they're twisting around and playing games with each other, and though they're pretty small, they can totally destroy huge skyscrapers.  And the news helicopter flies within a mile or so of the twister without being thrown out of the sky.  Not plausible.

More helicopters; this time in Scotland.  It's cold, but suddenly the temperature drops by 200 degrees.  Really?  Now it's minus 150 degrees, which is colder than the South Pole.  The fuel freezes in the 'copter, and it crashes.  The crew is frozen instantly when they open the door.  The cold metal door can protect them?  Really?

The whole US needs to evacuate to Mexico.  Somehow, the Mojave desert is now too cold, but head 100 miles south, and its warm and balmy.  Right.  And Southern Texas, right across the border from Mexico, isn't good enough, but you cross the Rio Grande, and it's fine.  Laughable.

One final example.  The whole US in now iced over, apparently, as is Europe and probably Asia too.  Yet Florida has flooded because of global warming.  Wait!  The Earth is freezing, soaking up billions of gallons of water, yet the sea levels are rising so as to flood the Sunshine state?  C'mon!

On and on it goes.  One howler after another.  I know they can't wait 100 years to watch the sea levels inch up because that would be boring, but to condense all this action in a month or so?  And how comes the Earth pretty much freezes over?  Isn't this global warming?  (Yes, I know about the North Atlantic conveyor, which moves warm water to the North of Europe, which by the way in this movie drops by 30 degrees in seconds.)

Crummy, crummy, crummy.  There's a love story of sorts thrown in, between students Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. together with a noble doctor (Sela Ward), the helpful sidekick, and a doomed scientist (Ian Holm).   The one positive?  Decent special effects.

Mind-numbingly bad.  Avoid at all costs.