The Day After Tomorrow

At the end of its reviews, the New York Times each week provides the film's rating and the probable reason why it received it. In the case of A.O. Scott's review of The Day After Tomorrow, it observes that the film is rated PG-13, then notes: Millions of people die, but nobody swears, copulates, undresses or takes drugs. Most of the reviewers give the film relatively high marks for special effects and low ones for story. Indeed Jan Stuart in Newsday comments that director Roland Emmerich crams the film with enough digital wizardry to make you wish he had jettisoned the script altogether and simply paraded the visual effects with chapter titles such as 'Snow Over New Delhi' and 'The Hollywood Sign Gets Totaled.' In fact, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes: The special effects are on such an awesome scale that the movie works despite its cornball plotting. And Megan Lehmann in the New York Post agrees, writing: This is mindless popcorn fun for moviegoers who get a vicarious thrill from seeing stuff get wrecked -- and have a high pain threshold for tin-eared dialogue. Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News also agrees that the film has very little emotional pull, not even in the purportedly heroic sequences featuring citizens banding together to stay alive. But let's face it: You're gonna go to see the tidal wave, and the tornadoes. And for those moments when they're onscreen, you'll be swept away by sights that you'll never be able to see on The Weather Channel. But several critics don't buy the argument that the script is inconsequential when you're making a disaster epic. Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post argues that Emmerich destroys all that he has accomplished visually with a trite plot, banal dialogue, clunky sentimentality and, worst of all, a sort of narrative arbitrariness by which he's shunting his paper-thin characters this way and that to shoehorn in as many effects as possible. Likewise, Michael Wilmington writes in the Chicago Tribune: Global warming may be one of the great dangers facing our planet. But cliched scripts are still the No. 1 peril for the big Hollywood blockbuster.