review: The Day After Tomorrow
Early on in "The Day After Tomorrow" we learn that Donnie Darko is afraid of airplanes. As well he should be after what happened last time. This time around though, it's not stray jet engines trying to kill him, it's the weather. Thanks to grepmaster, I was already familiar with the possibility of this particular type of apocalypse before I heard of the movie, along with all the other known possibilities. Like many people who have reviewed the relevant literature my favorite is 'collapse of the vacuum'. 'Sudden global climate shift', however, makes for a much better movie.

The movie was not black and white, but it was preachy all over. Some of the preaching was worthwhile Stuff People Need to Hear, but most of it was lame and useless. A guy who apparently was single-handedly responsible for the weather service in L.A. fails to stay at his post, commenting "this is L.A., what weather?", and so L.A. gets no advance warning before being destroyed by tornadoes.

I am reminded of two things here: First, the book Isaac's Storm, about the Galveston 1900 Hurricane. It's the true story of when weathermen were cowboys, and one such man whose hubris lead him to insist that there was no storm and give no warning to the Galvestonians.

I am also reminded of Lewis Black's rant on weathermen. "What's the best job you can have in the world. It's being the weatherperson in San Diego, CA... You're on TV for less than a minute. You've got a 6-figure income. They're like 'what's the weather going to be like?' 'Nice....back to you.'" If he watches the movie, he'll be glad to see one of the other weatherman characters standing next to a tornado, like an idiot, get impaled and swept away on live tv.

There was a general ignoring the early warnings theme, along with a not listening to scientists freaking out about environmental stuff theme. The structurally challenged character (a mock PC term I picked up when hanging out with some interesting structurally challenged guys in D.C.) comments that people are driving their cars thinking they can pollute the air with impunity, and if I'm not mistaken, the paleoclimatologist drives a hybrid car. We should recall though that the last ice age started up without any help from us, the next one is perfectly capable of starting up without our help, we still don't know shit about the weather, and for all we know, stuff we pump into the air is just as likely to hold off a global weather catastrophe as start one.

My contrive-o-meter went off when the wolves that escaped from the zoo showed up to make getting penicillin from the Russian ship more dangerous, but that wasn't too bad. The plot holes I noticed were also very forgivable. For example, Donnie Darko fails to specify what library he needs to be rescued from.

Unlike past effects-heavy summer movies about big disasters that I have enjoyed, such as Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and even Armageddon, this one completely failed to find enough time for character development and humor. They should have made room for at least a cameo from Jeff Goldblum, and Steve Buscemi could have done something humorous and slightly perverse involving a frozen human corpse. Also, even though I find Sela Ward attractive in a weird Mrs. Robinson sort of way, the whole business with the mother figure should have been dropped or the runtime extended to make room for more development of Donnie Darko's character, and his relationships with his father and the hot intelligent chick.

There just aren't enough hot intelligent chicks out there, so we could at least give them a little more air time in our fiction, and they really dropped the ball in the sex sells arena. When the hot intelligent chick in the movie has to save Donnie Darko from hypothermia with her body heat she leaves all her clothes on. This is against standard procedure in such a scenario and is also a major failure to exploit one of the most blatant opportunities ever for a character to take her shirt off. Trust me on this one, when they drill you on first aid in boy scouts, you tend to remember this part. You have to remove clothing from both people so that heat can transfer more readily. I don't know how many guys had fantasies of being rescued from hypothermia by the nearest hot girl, but I know I'm not the only one.

The fast-creeping ice effects reminded me of vines and evil shadows and other things that creep quickly in high-budget horror movies, and thankfully, not of the ice effects in the horror that was Batman & Robin. Speaking of which, let us all hope that Arnold continues to stick with playing roles like Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Governor of California, and stays far far away from batman movies. I would say George Clooney should be shot for his part in that global disaster if he hadn't partially made up for it by directing Confessions of a Dangerous mind, which by the way, had Donnie Darko's on-screen and off sister in it.

Overall I enjoyed the movie, and I'm glad I went to see it. It's definitely not going on my 'must see' list though.