Barnes & Noble

The science behind this one may be a little shaky -- the possibility of a new Ice Age sweeping the planet overnight is pretty remote. But once you can get past the basic implausibility of the premise, you'll find that The Day After Tomorrow is, well, one of the coolest pictures to come along in quite a while. It's really a throwback to those great Irwin Allen disaster movies of the '60s and '70s. Allen's 1961 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, for example, took the opposite tack and posited that Earth's atmosphere could catch fire overnight. You take a group of people with disparate backgrounds, interests, and agendas; throw them together in a life-threatening situation caused by Mother Nature; and see how many of them survive to discover a means of reversing (or escaping) the effects of the calamity. In this case, climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), having foretold the possibility of global warming suddenly triggering a new Ice Age, gets no satisfaction from seeing his prediction come true -- because his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is trapped in New York City, which has already been swamped by a tidal wave and essentially frozen solid. As the planetary freezing moves southward, Jack heads northward to rescue Sam and others that may have survived. Director Roland Emmerich, no stranger to such apocalyptic goings-on, marshals assistance from his art director, cinematographer, and special-effects team to make this frigid farrago convincing, and it's to his credit that he succeeds admirably. Formulaic plotting and stereotypical characters aside, The Day After Tomorrow, like Jack Hill himself, plots a course and doggedly pursues it to a successful conclusion. Although the submersion of Manhattan by tidal wave was done fairly convincingly in 1933's Deluge, that film's visuals don't begin to compare to the digital magic conjured up by Emmerich's special-effects sorcerers. There probably isn't a viewer on the planet -- in hot or cold climes -- that won't feel a chill up his or her spine when the Statue of Liberty is swept under by a monster tsunami. Quaid and Gyllenhaal are appropriately stolid in their roles and more than adequately supported by Ian Holm, Sela Ward, Jay O. Sanders, and others. Relative newcomer Emmy Rossum makes a strong showing as Jake's plucky companion and (if she lives through the ordeal) probable girlfriend. Providing old-fashioned thrills served up with new-fangled technology, The Day After Tomorrow makes an ideal "popcorn movie," and one that will certainly stand the test of time with repeat viewings. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Directed by Roland Emmerich, the mega-budget, special-effects-laden epic Day After Tomorrow revolves around the onset of an international series of crises brought on by the long-term results of the greenhouse effect. At the eye of the storm is paleoclimatologist (a professor dedicated to the study of weather patterns throughout the ages) Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), who voluntarily takes on the preservation of the world in the dawn of the next ice age and all the disaster that comes along with it -- violent hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, massive floods, etc. Hall must also contact his son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who was in the middle of an academic competition in New York City when the chaos begun. In addition to facing the largest-scale onslaught of natural catastrophes in the history of humankind, Jack, in his journey north, must contend with the masses fleeing south in an attempt to resettle in a warmer climate. The Day After Tomorrow also features Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward, and Joe Cobden. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Product Details

• UPC: 024543135548
• Source: 20TH CENTURY FOX
• Region Code: 1
• Sound: DTS 5.1-Channel Surround Sound, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Español
• Subtitles: Español
• Time: 2:03:00
• Sales Rank: 8,973

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Day After Tomorrow / Master & Commander: the Far Side of the World
• Day After Tomorrow / X2: X-Men United
• World Destruction Box Set
• Volcano / Chain Reaction / The Day After Tomorrow
• Day After Tomorrow / Volcano
• Jake Gyllenhaal Triple Feature
• Action Hero Collection
• Action Hero Collection

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