The Day After Tomorrow

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating * * *)

You could say that Roland Emmerich likes the Big Picture. He brought the dead to life in Universal Soldier; the Martians took LA in Independence Day then Godzilla took New York; and Mel faced down the 13 states in The Patriot. Germany's "Little Spielberg" goes right over the top in this one — the director wipes out most of the Northern Hemisphere.

For those who can remember as far back as the 70s, there are echoes of Irwin Allen's famous disaster movies here: The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, big, silly stories with lots of stars, very little plot, near-disaster about every 15 minutes (where the ad-break would come if they were on TV), and a tearjerker story running alongside the main drama.

You'll see all those elements again. The only difference is that computer-generated thrills have come a long way since they sank a little plastic model in a bath and kidded us that it was an ocean liner 30 years ago.

Dennis Quaid stars as Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist, who has flash computers which predict that global warming will lead to a new ice age.

He must tell the world! He does, at a big conference in New Delhi, but the American vice-president (Kenneth Welsh), who looks very like Dick Cheney, rubbishes him. Now that's as close to reality as this movie gets, but then we don't expect science or sanity from movies like these. Or vice-presidents.

Hall is right, which we know he must be, otherwise we wouldn't have a movie, let alone a disaster movie. Huddling in Scotland, a British team led by Ian Holm confirms his theory. So, the Antarctic warms up and melts, it snows in India, Tokyo is pelted with hail. New York is drowned in a tidal wave. A hurricane blows the Hollywood sign clear to Kansas. And these effects really are just dandy.

The President thinks it would be a good idea to ground all flights (just as soon as the Saudis have flown home to better weather, presumably). He asks his vice-president what he should do. You're right, the response is not: Listen to Jack Hall next time.

By now Hall has a few of his own frosts in inland places to worry about. His teenage son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is caught up in the New York mayhem. This is the tearjerker side of the movie and if I wrote down how Dad saves the day, you wouldn't believe me. But then this is a big, silly disaster flick: you're not meant to believe, just enjoy.

The DVD offers superb, anamorphic 2.35:1 pictures, a great soundtrack, and a couple of tedious commentaries.

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