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 Chris' Review: Hey, since when does cold creep up on you like a monster? Ok first off I'm not even going to address all the scientific-like stuff that is horrendously wrong with this movie... because I really enjoyed it and hence I don't care. So anyone who wants to argue that the plot is completely implausible can go watch a different disaster movie... like Armageddon or something and then tell me how implausible it was. Now, for those of you that are still with me... this was a decent movie. No award winning performances, here... that's for sure. The plot was amateurish, the dialogue rolled off the actors tongues with the ease of a cinder block, and there were small subplots that really didn't need to be there and only distracted from the overall film...but it was fun. In the end it was just a really fun movie. Kind of like listening to AC/DC... you know it has no intellectual value, your life is not better for having listened to it, it certainly isn't cultured, but damn... if it isn't fun to head bang to! The obvious highlight of this movie was the special effects. CGI everywhere and it all looked great! The wolves were a little too much like Raptors in their movements... but even they looked great. For the most part, all the effects were seamless and worked. So all you CGI artists out there... well done, I say, well done. So Day After Tomorrow gets a big 5 thumbs up from me. The story moved a little slow and the dialogue was chunky and the actors could have phoned their lines in, but it's a movie that you see just for the effects. I'm buying it just so I can watch the tornado scenes over and over again. Seriously, "Twister" has nothing on this film.   Jim's Review: What do you do when your opponent has no face? How do you survive when your adversary cannot bleed, cannot be killed, cannot be resisted, cannot be controlled, and cannot be avoided? How do you dig in your heels against an enemy that can only be predicted, an enemy that advances with ruthless, indifferent efficiency? These, and other troubling questions are posed by a taut, gripping drama: "The Day After Tomorrow." Dennis Quaid plays government Climatologist Jack Hall, who is first shown taking core ice samples in Antarctica, then delivering the results of his findings in India at an international conference on global warming. Jack warns that evidence he's observed may point to imminent disaster: The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has contributed to the overall warming of the earth, which in turn has caused the softening of the polar ice caps. And if the polar ice caps were to melt, a sudden influx of fresh, cold water into the world's oceans would disrupt the North Atlantic Current...thereby causing the usual distribution of equatorial heat via the current to stall...Plunging the entire northern hemisphere into a new ice age. Jack reasons that this natural, repeatable cycle of the earth's self-regulating temperature modification is an event that occurs on its own every 10,000 years or so, but that the proliferation of man-made versions of the naturally-occurring environmental gases that usually cause it has accelerated the process to an immeasurable new standard. Got all of that? The counter-intuitive nature of the onset of global warming contributing to a new ice age makes little sense to the accumulated dignitaries at the conference, and so they scoff at Jack's suggestions that widespread, international change is needed immediately in order to avert the catastrophe. He leaves frustrated. Meanwhile, across the planet, Jack's shy, bookish son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is preparing for a trip to Manhattan to compete in an academic Decathlon. Jack is determined to make it home in time to drive Sam to the airport. The strain between them is palpable, speaking of years of Jack being too involved in his all-engrossing work to have much time left for his family. Then, with Jack safely home and Sam en route to the Big Apple, it starts. Icestorms in Tokyo. Blizzards in New Delhi. Tornadoes in downtown Los Angeles. Destructive, uncharacteristic weather begins occurring all over the globe. An associate of Jack's from Scotland (the always-welcome Ian Holm) contacts him with reports that his monitor buoys all through the NEC have apparently gone haywire, registering dramatic temperature drops. Jack realizes that the process he'd only just tried to warn the world about has begun. Over the course of the next few days, Jack's research and instruments render some startling predictions: Several unusual land-based hurricane-style storms have formed over the northern hemisphere, and are pulling super-cooled airmasses, potentially lethal to humans, down from the ionosphere's near space. And, of course, one of the storms is directly over New York. The film picks up dramatically in the second half. Scenes of Sam's forced survival and heroism in the face of diversity are inspiring, as is Jack's willingness to trudge directly and literally into the eye of the storm in order to reconnect spiritually and physically with his estranged son. And, of course, the effects are seamless. Regardless of the fact that, in a post-9/11 world, scenes of New York in peril are more frightening than entertaining, the soaking and subsequent freezing of Manhattan Island are rendered with alarming realism. And the terror of the weather as a faceless, indifferent killer is treated with an appropriate dash of moral ambiguity. The planet has begun the process of balancing itself, and the humans who have sped the process are the unfortunate casualties, fleeing in mortal fear of its soulless, methodical onslaught. Not-unconsiderable is the film's message, an admonishment that we all can make a smaller footprint on our environment. It only descends into ham-fistedness at the coda, but it reads as forgivable given the context. Watch for convincing (if not brilliant) performances by the under-used Sela Ward as Jack's Ex-Wife (and Sam's mother), a dedicated physician, and Emily Rossum as Laura, Sam's cute but serious Quiz Bowl teammate. I'm going to give "The Day After Tomorrow" seven thumbs up. As entertainment, it works, hearkening back to the classic disaster movies. But as a cautionary tale, it leaves a bit to be desired, its potential moral overshadowed by leaps of faith and plausibility. 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