The Day After Tomorrow (12A) Review

Overall Rating

Some of the effects were alright.

The plot was shocking, I ended up wanting them all to die.

I remember when I went to the cinema and I saw they'd made a film called 'The Day After Tomorrow' and I thought who is going to see that, then I saw the trailer and got quick excited, why, I don't know. After reading a few reviews I decided to watch it, expecting to laugh at a flimsy plot. I was right and it kind of entertained me and annoyed me in equal measures. Right from the start I was annoyed to see Dennis Quaid fall to his certain death only to find that some miracle force had put an ice pick in his hand. Why was he jumping over that massive gap anyway? No need, just go back and get your stuff a different way or, throw the stuff across and then jump back, just rubbish! I kind of like the little twists they put in like the wolves escaping from the zoo, even though they couldn't possibility escape from the zoo just because it was raining abnormally hard. I also thought the film was more than a little American-centric, I know it's set in America and is made predominately for Americans but when they make passing references to Europe by saying what happened there? 'It's under 15ft of Snow', so everyone's pretty much dead then? Well I really care now if 'Donnie Darko' gets it on with that bird. And what was with that instant freezing part in the centre of the storm? I'm no meteorologist, but the buildings were already frozen, covered in snow and ice and as the eye of the storm passed over they froze even more, how frozen can a building become? And then to make it more annoying, they had scenes of the ice chasing them down the corridor, fortunately, despite bringing about the end of the city of New York it could not penetrate a wooden door.

If I've not already put you off, and I hope I haven't because it's worth seeing, just not for the reasons they intended. I'm about to ruin the ending if you are waiting to see it, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want it ruined. I'm sat there watching thinking, how can they possibility give this the Hollywood happy ending? It is the end of the world and pretty much everyone is going to die if they haven't already or live in Africa in which case they might just need a few extra jumpers. Why did I even care if Dennis Quaid (was his character's name really Jack Hall? A joke surely to represent how much thought had gone into the plot) had reached his son because what was he going to do anyway. By the time he got there he would be exhausted, have very few supplies left and no way of getting home, great plan! I can imagine the meeting they had when the film directors and script writers were like, 'We can't just let everyone die.'
'What can we do then?'
'What about if the storm just stops, and goes away?'
'Genius!'
No it's not it goes against everything the film spent 2 hours telling us about what the weather was going to do. It was going to get worse. I think they should have killed them all and left at that. That would really make you think when you left the cinema about how much pollution we cause and all that.

Anyway if you're still with me, watch the film but you need to take the frame of mind that you will not be impressed with the plot (They even copied the self sacrifice bit out of Vertical Limit). See it and simply laugh at how bad it is and be impressed by some of the effects though some of them were actually quite poor and were obviously computer images.