| MOVIE
BIASES: Good title, good subject, good trailer. Bring it!
MAJOR PLAYERS: Dennis Quaid (The Rookie), Jake Gyllenhaal
(The Good Girl), co-writer/director Roland Emmerich (Independence
Day)
 As
I used to temp for some a bunch of tree-hugging granola head
lawyers at an environmental law firm, I've heard about this
movie for quite some time. Even though this movie seems to
aid their cause, the Fox publicity machine has (wisely?) downplayed
the political and environmental themes of its summer blockbuster
of a disaster flick. The result? You should go see it –
the day after tomorrow.
Jack Hall (Quaid) is a highly regarded yet highly ignored
paleoclimatologist whose model for global warming destroying
the world as we know it draws some interest when, well, it
starts happening. Amid rising swells, freak snowstorms, and
temperature dropping oceans around the world, Jack's emotionally
estranged yet casually brilliant son Sam (Gyllenhaal) heads
off to New York City for an academic decathlon mostly because
of a girl. And then the chaos begins: lethal hailstorms in
Tokyo, hurricanes tearing up LA, and tidal waves so fierce
they turn the Big Apple into Venice West. With the government
finally listening but in little position to avert the wrath
of Mother Nature, Jack decides to trek from DC to New York
in sub-freezing temperatures to get to his son, who's guiding
a group of people trapped in the New York Public Library to
survival.
Okay, okay, I hear you – this is patently unbelievable.
Well, sort of. The science part of it maybe part Hollywood
hokum, but I do know for a fact that the crux of it is real.
You don't have to be a card carrying member of the Green Party
to have known from the fifth grade that our human consumptive
nature is turning the Earth into an ashtray at the tobacco
lobby. So once those fifth grade sensibilities kick in to
suspend your disbelief, you start thinking, "Damn. Where
WILL I be 'The Day After Tomorrow???'"
No one will ever accuse Roland Emmerich of being subtle. The
dialogue in the film, while not overly preachy, isn't Shakespeare
either. It's dry, straightforward, and shockingly clunky at
times. It's almost as if the dialogue is there to educate
us on the evils of global warming and then usher us from one
exploding special effects set piece to the next. Character
development takes a back seat to disaster management –
and I'm almost okay with that.
Pity the poor actors, who don't have much to do but react
and look scared, despite having the always engagingly intense
Nestor Serrano and the perpetually elegant Sela Ward. The
former doesn't have much to do but bark at Quaid while the
latter's role is easily the most thankless in the movie, babysitting
a sick, bedridden kid while the world falls apart around them.
Yawn. Even Quaid and Gyllenhaal's performances are somewhat
by the numbers. Quaid's performance is as down the middle
as a Bush-Kerry election poll and Gyllenhaal does an even
softer, quieter version of his normal screen persona, if possible.
Jake Gyllenhaal, REEL DEAL Crush Maggie's brother, specializes
in playing bright, moody, disaffected loners, with the only
spin in this role being his shy lovesickness for Emmy Rossum's
(Mystic River) Laura. Gyllenhaal's understated, wryly charming
performances are always curious to watch, for you know there's
a fierce intelligence behind those moondog eyes of which he
only barely scratches the surface.
But the unseen character, the sixth man in basketball, if
you will, is Mother Nature, or the special effects team behind
her. This movie is eminently watchable solely because of the
realistic nature of the visual effects. Usually technology's
abused in movies to drown a movie's story (see "Van Helsing").
In "Tomorrow's" case, it only amplifies it. Armed
with your suspended disbelief and "what if" scenario
in your head, it's easy to be excited and intimidated by seeing
tornadoes literally erase Hollywood off the map, basketball-sized
hail kill people walking the street, or watch people freeze
to death in superstorms that drop ten degrees in temperature
per second. Never discount Hollywood's wow factor, as I sat
there watching cars being tossed around LA's I-405 by a twister,
saying to myself, "Shoot. There goes the crib."
The drum-banging, ominously foreboding musical score didn't
help my anxiety either.
Once the storms set in, this becomes a dark movie without
much humor. Whatever humor's there is wrought from irony:
burning formidable tax law books to stay warm, reverse illegal
immigration to Mexico, and a Dick Cheney look-a-like Vice
President who becomes the biggest ass on the planet for his
fossil fueled arrogance. With no escape in sight for mankind
(can't duck Mother Earth), a real climax/solution seems impossible,
a la 1998's asteroid-coming-to-clobber-Earth movie "Deep
Impact" instead of the other 1998 asteroid flick "Armageddon"
where they drilled and blew the sucker up. This movie makes
it painfully aware, mostly through action than talking, that
if we don't clean out our ashtray, we may never see "The
Day After Tomorrow." Sad that it takes a movie destined
to be a global blockbuster to get that point across more effectively
than any tree-hugging granola head lawyer ever could.
@@@ REELS
(THREE REELS)
It's pretty hot – go give it a shot.
Like what you read? Agree/disagree with The Reel Deal? Think
he's talkin' out his...HUSH YO' MOUF! (I'm only talkin' about
The Reel Deal!) Email him at ReelReviewz@aol.com!
Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and
NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com,
and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com
© 2004, Edwardo Jackson
|
