Critic's Grade: B-

The films of Roland Emmerich are like the popcorn you'd by at the concession stand before entering the auditorium for the main feature: the more butter and cheese, the better the taste. Which makes "The Day After Tomorrow" an appetizing snack that leaves you wanting more when all the top layers of flavor have given way to the crumbs that lay at the bottom of the bag. This is a little surprising, considering just how gung-ho Emmerich is about big-budget, effects-loaded blockbusters that focus more on the best CGI available than anything else. I guess what I'm trying to get across here is this: why pay for a lecture on global warming, when what you're really there for is the visual simulation of its aftermath?

Not that there aren't moments in "Tomorrow" that aren't worth catching on the big screen, especially after being teased with a smart marketing campaign for so long. Anyone with half a brain knows that you don't go to a movie like this looking for deep characters or thought-provoking plot. It's all about the special effects, and let me tell you, these are some of the most awe-inspiring effects I've seen in a movie of this sort. Move over, "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"; step aside, "The Core." In terms of its visual interpretation of natural disasters gone loco, this is the queen mother of all epic Earth-in-peril movies.

The plot is pretty basic, with a bunch of people running around making discoveries about sudden, erratic changes in the globe's weather patterns, beginning with the separation of a large chunk of Antarctic ice, and leading up to the disruption of the North Atlantic Current, which supplies the Northern Hemisphere the heat it needs from the Equator to keep the weather from getting out of hand. Once that happens, everything just goes crazy. Typhoon-spawned twisters start popping out of the sky over Los Angeles, while basketball-sized hail falls in Tokyo and snow drops in New Delhi. And let's not forget poor New York City, which finds itself awash in heavy rain, followed by the rising waters of the Atlantic, which quickly consume the city's lower half before freezing under the temperatures of a new ice age.

All of this is captured with glorious and stunning realism by the filmmakers, and it's apparent that a lot of work and effort went into making sure that such scenes were believable in terms of appearance. Watching that wave of water overtake the Statue of Liberty as it heads straight for the Big Apple is nothing short of jaw-dropping, to say nothing of the Russian tanker that makes its way past the public library while the waters remain unfrozen. After the screening, I found myself wondering if I could be considered a sadist for wanting more of the destructive eye candy and less of the mopey human subplots, most of which were completely tossable from the get-go.

The human aspect of the film centers around Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a government climatologist whose theories about global warming's effects suddenly starting making some waves- both figurative and literal- in Washington and elsewhere. He keeps in contact with Professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm), who clues him in to the fact that what was once believed to take place hundreds of years in the future could very well be happening right now. It just so happens that Jack's son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in New York for a decathlon to impress a girl on his school's team; later, once the city that never sleeps is devastated by nature's wrath, Jack sets out on a course from D.C. to save his son before it's too late.

Now, I'm not exactly sure what his chances of survival would be in real life, especially considering that the temperature drops at times to below one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit, causing everything- buildings, humans, you name it- to freeze instantaneously. Nor am I convinced that our government is as ignorant of nature's potential for danger as the film makes its political figures out to be. It all has to do with Emmerich's attempts to give us a stern talking-to about where our planet is headed if we continue on the course we're on, and if you ask me, it was completely uncalled for. Summer is supposed to be about escapism, about forgetting our schooling and lessons for a few fleeting months and venturing to the theater to see a movie that destroys the world many times over. "The Day After Tomorrow" does just that, but wants to put us back in the classroom while doing so.

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