-   Big “What if?” plotline
-   Spectacular Destruction of Landmarks Money shots
-   Casting of B-List Talent as opposed to Headlining Star
-   Portentous warning from the past
-   Father /Son dynamic
-   PC ensemble that covers the entire (U.S.) multicultural
    spectrum
-   Left Wing agenda

So here we have The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster movie that predicts the extreme weather patterns that could enact an abrupt ice age across the Northern Hemisphere, destroying western civilization. A premise that gives Emmerich the opportunity to relive the glory of his biggest hit Independence Day (1996), while toning down on the Clinton-era jingoism and the comedy inherent in casting Will Smith as your hero and Rent-a-Alien as your villains. Emmerich, whether reprising Vietnam in Middle America (Universal Soldier, 1992), inviting a Japanese movie icon to visit New York (Godzilla, 1998) or allowing Mel Gibson to win the Revolutionary War (The Patriot, 1999) knows that to make an epic entertainment you need shots that take both the audience’s breath away so as to distract the characters from their cookie cutter subplots—selling a movie in a few indelible images is what he does best. The White House pulverized by a vast UFO’s laser. An eighteenth century cannon ball relentlessly skimming the ground as it smashes through troops and hurtles into the lens. The size of a giant lizard track in comparison to a jeep revealed by a crane of the camera.

Godzilla, a derided flop of few pleasures, was sold poorly with the tagline “Size Matters.” Yet this has been the Emmerich ethos in approaching his brand of cinema since he first broke through with Stargate (1993), a patchwork of supersized moments lifted from better films. As a director he cannot help but exaggerate, dialogue in his latest describes the threat of “hailstones as big as golfballs!” but in the special effects labs these have been superseded by a torrent of ice chunks the size of footballs. Emmerich delivers a sense of overwhelming awe in the same characteristic way that Jerry Bruckheimer can persuade his latest hack to deliver orange-hued militaristic mayhem or Spielberg can instill a sense of childlike wonder at even the most ominous, gargantuan intruders. His detractors will say that an Emmerich has neither the intelligence nor artistry of the latter while lacking the irrational fun of the former. Yet with The Day After Tomorrow, his most po-faced popcorn venture to date, he has made a blockbuster with just as many flaws as his previous efforts but with a lot more directorial craftsmanship.

There’s no doubt that a film which sees bystanders crushed by an Angelyne billboard and thoroughly relishes the ripping apart of various landmarks still has delivering visual thrills as its main priority. The trailer moments here are all grand ones; tidal waves crashing between New York’s skyscrapers, blinding daylight filling the hallway through the cracks of an office door where the office (and the other half of the building, of course) has been ripped away by a tornado, frozen tanker ships jutting out between the ice that holds the Statue of Liberty waist deep. Lovely CGI stuff that you’ll never see in a Von Trier, Linklater, or Dardenne Brothers masterpiece, just as you’ll never see a recognizably human moment here (unless you live in an Cheerios advert or a Tom Clancy novel). One does have to wonder why Emmerich goes to the trouble of seeking out non-box office-quantity actors unless it’s to save money for the effects budget or find thespians capable of making the clichéd characters and between effect sequences situations emotionally involving. Both Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal are solid and dependable personalities who can convey the science, which rationalizes the environmental cataclysm, while at least garnering some enthusiasm for the filler moments involving ex-wives and teenage love triangles with an effective professionalism.

Perhaps the blandness of the human endeavors is purposeful. The lack of emotion between characters, the inclusion of such disaster movie standards as the terminally ill child and indestructible dog, and the lack of passion even the unrequited love strand generates is all Emmerich’s intentional doing. He needs the humanity to seem inconsequential in the face of frozen cataclysm. The dialogue may lack any trace of real interaction but it is also pointedly humorless when compared to the exchanges within Godzillaor Independence Day. The characters themselves exist in pale blue checked shirts, dirtied winter wear, brown hoodies and corduroy jackets. They don’t stand out, they lack distinctive color compared to either their urban or arctic landscapes. Everything has been drained, diluted to emphasize the totality of the situation, the insignificance of the population once the atmosphere strikes back.

And let us remember that this is that rarest of breeds; an event movie with a message. Obviously the set pieces are the cash crop, but that doesn’t stop Emmerich from nurturing a consistent green memorandum throughout his cheesy carnage-fest. In the post-9/11 climate it seems quite daring to acknowledge that natural disasters would be inconsiderate enough to hit the Big Apple, yet whether through sensitivity or a clear conviction to reap the grand effect these speculative extremes inflict themselves mostly upon the modern environment rather than anonymous human masses. The film only once lingers on corpses (frozen and absorbed into the white ground) and more often than not the FX rip through buildings and cars rather than homes and families. As cautious as Emmerich is of overstepping the permissible when it comes to attacking America physically on screen, he is rather less reticent in voicing an opinion in direct contrast to current U.S. environmental policy. The short-term strategem of protecting U.S. jobs in direct contravention of the Kyoto agreement, itself is only a half measure in the prevention of global warming, is directly challenged. Or, watch as hordes of U.S. citizens cross the Rio Grande to reach the safe haven of Mexico forcing the conservative President to cancel all Third World debt to guarantee this immigration is made legal.

This, for our times, slightly un-American vibe is reflected by the marketing campaign in Europe where the film has been advertised with a poster that depicts a frosted Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House engulfed in tidal waves. The international Fox marketing team are all too aware that an excessively patriotic “Yanks save the world” flick will be very unpalatable considering the vocal opposition from across the globe to the U.S. and British occupation of Iraq. Tomorrowmight be free of the expected promotional images, but in a sequence that finds the Stars and Stripes suddenly flash-frozen into a flat sheet by a deadly drop of temperature can a worldwide audience sense a different voice on the U.S. role in environmental issues, and its effect on the world in general, than the monotonous, arrogantly skewed one currently emanating from the incumbent administration.

Even if Emmerich is far too much the showman to dare not include the fossil fuel-burning gunship helicopters that make his final moments generically cool, we can breathe free in the knowledge that The Day After Tomorrow’s protagonist is probably the first contemporary action hero to own an electric car for ethical reasons as well as the lucrative product placement deal that happened behind the scenes. Here is a tentpole summer flick with its heart in the right place, even if it lacks soul and spunk. And how many current blockbusters display any of those qualities? Perhaps Tomorrow heralds a climatic shift where Roland will be considered a sensitive auteur working on a larger canvass than Moore or Loach. Hell, he already gave the French a pasting for testing their nuke near where Godzilla’s momma nested! Who’s next?
—BOB CARROLL