In the dramatic opening scene of this disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla), Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) and two fellow scientists are on the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica when it begins to break up and plunge into the sea. Later at a Global Warming Conference in New Dehli where it is snowing, this anxious climatologist warns government officials from many countries that steps must be taken now to lessen fossil fuel use or the world might experience what took place ten thousand years ago when severe temperature drops ushered in an Ice Age that destroyed most life on the planet. The know-it-all Vice President of the United States (Kenneth Welsh) says that any attempts to do so would wreck havoc on the world economy; he makes it clear that he thinks Hall is exaggerating the situation.

But rare changes in the weather are taking place in other parts of the world as well. Hailstones the size of baseballs and bricks rain down on the unprepared and scared citizens of Tokyo. Then at a scientific station in Scotland, Professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) notices unusual drops in the ocean temperature in several locations, too many to be a malfunction or coincidence. Then multiple tornados roar through Los Angeles erasing the familiar Hollywood sign and the Capitol Records building. Now the White House starts to pay attention.

Hall says that the melting polar caps have upset the balance of salt and fresh water, affecting the warming flow of the North Atlantic current. He predicts a swift descent into a new Ice Age. A hurricane specialist working with NASA joins Hall and his Scotland compatriots and they discover much to their dismay that precipitous temperature changes are taking place all over the globe. And it is happening very rapidly. Instead of the years they thought it would take, they now have only days and there is no way to stop it.

The Day After Tomorrow is based on The Coming Global Superstorm written by Whitley Streiber and Arthur Bell. Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff have adapted this pop-apocalyptic work for the screen and admit that they have sped up the time frame for a change from global warming to deep freeze for dramatic purposes. Whatever you think of the scientific explanations given for the phenomenon, the movie deserves praise for making one thing very clear: humans, especially in the industrialized countries, are the evil-doers who are responsible for the destruction of the good earth.

While the first two-thirds of this disaster film impresses with its tension and special effects wonders, the last third of the story falters badly thanks to the incredibly silly plot of having Hall, the archetypal too-busy father, travel from Philadelphia to New York City, most of the way on snowshoes, to fulfill a promise he made over the phone to his teenage son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal). We will not reveal the catastrophes that have befallen the boy, his girl friend (Emmy Rossum), and other members of an academic decathlon team who are holed up in Public Library. In another city, Hall's wife Lucy (Sela Ward), a doctor, decides to sacrifice her life by looking after a child cancer patient.

Instead of following the heroic activities of the Hall family, the filmmakers could have made a real contribution to global politics by filling out another plot development. The U.S. government orders an evacuation of the southern states, sending millions of Americans across the border into Mexico. In a fascinating role reveral, the Vice President must go on television and thank the Mexicans and other "third world" countries for bailing America out. Little is done with this storyline, much to our dismay.

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