Review of Day After Tomorrow

Oh my God, this movie blew. On so many levels did this movie blow. Everyone said it was going to be over the top, but to me it seemed more like it was off the deep end. Imagine a hurricane type storm that covers the entire continental United States. The movie was kind of "broken" into two halves. The first half was the catastrophic sudden climate changes, in which helicopters crashed because their fuel lines froze, people were flash frozen sitting in their cars, and dozens of F-5 tornadoes tore apart California (ok, that part was pretty cool). I'll admit, I have a thing for disaster movies and I really enjoy watching stuff get broken in them. Thus the first half of the movie was bearable because lots of stuff got broken. The second half of the movie was a complete suckfest. The viewer spends the next hour and a half watching a few survivors trying to stay warm. Seriously, that's all it is. I wanted to scream "Ok, they're cold, we get it....BREAK SOMETHING!!!!" Oh yeah, they go playing on a ship that's sitting outside the New York city library (after the tidal wave comes in and the water flash freezes). And they get chased by a bunch of starving wolves who somehow managed not to be frozen even though millions of gallons of water were frozen in a few minutes. The vice president, whom I would argue was modeled after Dick Cheney, is portrayed as a pompous know-it-all doubting mustaffa (in other words modeled after most rational thinking people). So here's the basic plot. The polar ice caps are melting causing a huge rush of fresh water into the seas which creates a huge imbalance in the oceans. This imbalance causes the Gulf Stream winds to cease blowing, preventing warm air from the equatorial section from getting to the northern regions. Next thing you now New York is under hundreds of feet of snow and it's snowing in Florida. The entire population of the United States (the ones still alive) are evacuated into, get this now, Mexico. In what was one of the few bright spots in the movie, thousands of U.S. citizens are shown evacuating into Mexico; jumping fences and crossing the Rio Grande. Funny in a sad, pathetic sort of way. And yes, I'm pretty sure I saw Gore's name in the credits. He's certainly taking this movie as gospel. In what was presumably supposed to be the most dramatic moment of the movie turned out as the most absurd; as the main characters tried to outrun the eye of this super storm where temperatures plummeted to -150F. In this scene the characters were actually shown trying to outrun a flash freeze; as they were trucking along desperate for shelter, the entire earth behind just 20ft behind them was being covered in ice. The entire scene was reminiscent of those old 80's horror flicks where the screaming scantily clad girl was running terrified from some unseen terror just a few feet behind her. I reiterate, do not see this movie. It was utterly terrible, and I will never forgive Dennis Quaid for having played a part in it. If by some chance you are one of those obsessed with disaster movies, or you're a special effects junkie; then go to a theater, pay your 8 bucks, and watch the first hour of this movie. Just be sure you leave once all the disaster effects are done. That would be about the time the sea water that's flooded New York city flash freezes. Good God what a bunch of tools.