So I’ve just got back from a nice – but rushed – meal and a visit to Clapham Picture House to see Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s a vision of what will happen if we don’t all take up cycling, ditch the cars and stop throwing out refrigerators with the trash (or some such thing).
Actually, it’s a disaster movie with a message and it certainly makes the grade as the first, although the message is somewhat lost along the way and the plot is, like all movies in this genre, ridiculously enjoyable. Basically, it starts to rain and then gets very cold and the only place where you seem to be able to survive is in the New York is the public library (and that’s because you can burn the books). Gyllenhaal’s dad, is of course, the only person on the whole of the American continent who can save him so he tries to. Marvelous, stupid and thoroughly entertaining.
Ian Holm puts in a notable performance from a remote Scottish weather station where – at the moment of disaster – they decide to toast England, Manchester United and Mankind (so not very convincingly Scottish – although they, of course, drink a decent malt to ward off the end).
It’s a mankind-in-peril, gripping disaster movie and I found it immensely entertaining. It’s stunning when it’s building and the effects are at their best (and who cares if the ice at the start looks computer generated)? Sadly, it does fade a little towards the end – especially as any last elements of believability fly out the window – but as a couple of hours entertainment you must go and see this film.
The message to all of Planet Earth is, of course, corrupted to work for the film and lost after the first third. But that doesn’t make any difference.