TJL's DVD Ciritic's Corner - 1/26/05

[TJL]

Many of the truths I hold dear to me I learned from watching disaster movies.
“Towering Inferno” taught me never to go into any skyscraper over one story high. “Airport,” and its sequels “Airport 75” and “77” taught me a huge state of the art jumbo jet is only as good as the downward spiraling actor at the controls, and “Poseidon Adventure” introduced me to the concept of Hell, which is Earnest Borgnine in a wet T-shirt.
The lessons taught by modern disaster films have eluded me. Granted, one might watch “Independence Day” and deduce that space aliens may not be trustworthy, but anyone who’s been forcibly abducted and probed in the poop chute by those curious little buggers while I was on a nature hike minding my own freaking business can tell you that!
The latest Hollywood apocalyptic opus is “The Day After Tomorrow,” where the weather outside is frightful, and things are not delightful, and only Dennis Quaid can save us! Quaid plays Jack Hall, a climatologist who wears parkas and those really cool glacier glasses while conducting dangerous expeditions in the farthest reaches of the globe, trying desperately to solve the mysteries of the planetary weather system and to convince filmgoers that science is interesting, which, of course we all know, it isn’t.
Our hunky Mr. Science discovers that Mother Nature is about to put a smackdown on good old planet earth in the form of some really harsh weather. We’re talking heavy rain, fierce winds, a billion feet of snow, the kind of weather your grandparents always said they had when they were kids when life was so much better before all the computers and cell phones and every goddamn thing cost only a penny.
Jack tries to warn the world leaders a big ol storm’s a brewin’ but the Vice President tells him in no uncertain terms to shut up and go back to doing the weather on “Live At Five.” When you think about it, what self-respecting local new team wouldn’t want handsome Dennis Quaid delivering the five-day “accueweather” forecast? It’s ratings gold!
Before you can say, “It’s a bit nippy out tonight,” the weather goes completely whackadoo. Watermelon size hail pummels Japan, leveling all the Hello Kitty factories. Tornadoes rip through Hollywood, preventing millions of waitresses and busboys from going on auditions and just totally wrecking any good vibes, and a giant tidal wave brings more unwanted dampness to Manhattan, making it even harder to get food delivered to your apartment and trapping Jack’s estranged son in some serious midtown gridlock.
Jake Gyllenhaal, who believes staring at stuff with his big bug eyes counts as acting, plays Sam, Quaid’s nerdy but resourceful son. While waiting for dear old Dad to save him, Sam and a handful of The Big Apple’s most annoying citizens hunker down for a new ice age in the New York Public Library, battling a killer snowstorm and packs of computer generated wolves (I sh*t you not) that are now wandering the city.
With everything north of the Mason Dixon now a premier skiing and snowboarding destination, Jack dons his parka, packs up a sled, and along with a few supporting characters who won’t mind dying to advance the plot, sets off on foot from Washington D.C. to New York to rescue his son, because everyone knows how slow the Amtrak shuttle from D.C. to New York can be during a world ending apocalypse, and movie Dads love their kids way more than real life Dads.
Jack and his son are reunited in the frozen tundra that used to be a perfectly good metropolitan city, and they promise to do more father and son things together, which will be pretty easy since everyone else in the Northeast is dead so there will probably be fewer lines for tokens over at the mini-golf fun center.
The moral “The Day After Tomorrow” is that we should be kind to the weather, or face horrible consequences. So the next time you're chatting up the weather at a crowded bar, share a few drinks then take the weather back to the apartment for a little humpty dance, please offer to buy the weather some breakfast the next morning, and ask for a phone number, even if you don’t plan on calling.
Sure, the weather can be a bit flighty and unpredictable, but the least you can do is pretend to be nice.

[Cactus Jack]

Great review!

[TJL]

"Catwoman" is out on DVD this week, isn't it?

[Janice]

Right on target. I saw the movie. I thought it was going to be action packed. The best action scenes were shown in the trailer.