The Day After Tomorrow is fairly standard disaster movie fare. Authorities ignore the urgent warnings of experts, stock characters battle superb special effects and hundreds (or in this case millions) of extras die horrible deaths so that the movie's main character can learn a Valuable Life Lesson.

The Valuable Life Lesson here is even the ultra-traditional one - Spend More Time With Your Family.

So am I saying don't watch this movie?  Not at all.  It's a fun view.  Just don't watch it expecting the characters to surprise you, that's all I'm saying.

The disaster in The Day After Tomorrow is global warming.  While most expectations for global warming involve a gradually warming globe and problems associated with the increased temperature, here we see an alternative scenario.  The melting of the polar ice caps changes the temperature and salinity of the oceans, kicking off a new ice age - and in a matter of days, not decades or centuries. 

Is it plausible?  I have no idea.  Hey, I'm a science fiction movie fan - if the plot calls for technology that creates fully adult clones with the memories of the original, I'll accept that for the purposes of the story.  Here the theory of rapid climate change is presented by the scientists in a manner to sound plausible without overwhelming us with technobabble, and that's good enough for me.

The expert being ignored this time is paleo-climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid).  The family he's ignoring consists of teenage son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ex-wife Dr. Lucy Hall (Sela Ward).  The authorities ignoring his warnings about rapid climate shift are represented by sneering, Cheneyesque Vice President Becker (Kenneth Walsh).

Naturally, within days Hall is proven to be correct. 

The effects are spectacular, not surprising since The Day After Tomorrow was scripted, directed and produced by Roland Emmerich, whose other works include Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla.  A whole herd of twisters devastate downtown Los Angeles - we can be certain that civilization as we know it is coming to an end when they take out the Hollywood sign.

But the twisters are only the appetizer for the monster storms brewing.  As near as I can make out, the storms are continent-wide combination hurricane-blizzards.  Three of them, spaced all around the globe.  In the center of these storms are cells of ultra-cold air that will freeze a person to death in a matter of seconds. 

With the storms commencing, the authorities are listening to Hall now.  What can they do?  Hall, briefing the President, tells them to evacuate the southern half of the United States, moving everyone south to Mexico.  What about the northern half?  It's too late to do anything about them until the ultra-storms are passed, something that will take about a week.

Complicating the issue, son Sam has gone from his home in DC to a scholastic decathalon in New York City.  He and his high school friends attempt to leave the city, but it's too late now and the water is rising.  They and other New Yorkers take refuge in the Public Library.  The scenes of the flooding and freezing of New York are spectacular.

It's fun to watch Sam and his hardy band roughing it in the library, arguing about which books to burn.  ("Here's a whole section of tax law!")  When one of the refugees is a street person with his little dog, does any student of the genre doubt for a moment that the pair will survive? 

Meanwhile Jack, who's just officially advised the government to write off the northern half of the nation, now sets off for New York City in the predictable son-quest.  At least he had polar expedition experience and is certainly outfitted for what passed for cold in normal times, but what about those ultra-cold cells that he was just warning everyone about?

Never mind.  It's neat to see Lady Liberty up to her hips in the new sheet of ice. 

What's frustrating about The Day After Tomorrow is the sense of 'now what?!'  Most disaster movies end with a return to a state of normality (with the heroes, of course, taking away those Valuable Life Lessons).  But The Day After Tomorrow ends with most of the northern hemisphere covered in an ice sheet, beginning what we are told will be a new ice age.  If this were a novel, it would be book one of a trilogy.

Nonetheless, it's fun - disaster movie fans, "if this is the sort of thing you like, you'll like this sort of thing."  Bring plenty of popcorn, and perhaps an afghan or lap robe - you're going to start to imagine that you're getting a bit chilly.

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