It’s The Day After Tomorrow and polar melting has disrupted the North Atlantic current. Ocean temperatures drop 13 degrees and the weather of the world goes bananas. Snow blankets India, hail the size of toaster ovens hammers Tokyo and tornadoes raze Los Angeles, pausing briefly to Hoover away the iconic Hollywood sign. Ian Holm, in a wasted opportunity for such a fine actor, plays the Voice of Scientific Reason who offers unheeded warnings then freezes to death with his colleagues in a weather station in Scotland, but not before hoisting a single-malt “to mankind.”
Extra-special wrath is saved for Manhattan. A disgruntled taxi driver once mused, “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” Look out, Travis; here it comes. Tidal waves buffet the city and flood it. Then comes the window-breaking, flesh-stiffening cold: it’s the beginning of a new ice age. Jake Gyllenhaal and his motley band of survivors hole up in the New York Public Library, burning books to stay warm. They bicker, forage for food, get chased by wolves, ponder what the future will hold, etc.
The movie is bookended by a hammy environmental message, particularly at the queasily macho America-will-soldier-on conclusion that has a Dick Cheney-lookalike President admitting "we were wrong" about all that ozone layer and global warming stuff. I particularly enjoyed the phrases uttered in wild-eyed seriousness throughout by environmental scientist Dennis Quaid, who gets to say lots of lines like, “I think we’ve hit a critical desalinization point!”
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the special effects. And in a way I’m glad the filmmakers were aware the CGI served as their leading lady. If they’d bothered adding more dimension to the stock disaster-survival-movie characters and plot, they only would have made the digital enterprise less enjoyable. There’s little chance the actions of Man can compete with the sight of a tidal wave cascading down Fifth Avenue or the Statue of Liberty spiked with giant windblown icicles and buried to her waist in a glacier.