Orson Scott Card is so damned funny

[somedaybitch]

What did you really think The Day After Tomorrow was going to be? It's a disaster flick, folks. All kinds of stuff goes wrong, everybody's in danger, lots of people die, but our heroes figure out clever and courageous things to do and they're able to save the people we care about most.

It's almost a rule in disaster movies that the dialogue must be humiliatingly bad, and Tomorrow accomplishes that.

Here's what's particularly good about the movie: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, and Ian Holm. These are actors whose ability to be real on screen is so powerful that it trumps the dialogue and makes us care. (Sela Ward and Emmy Rossum are also good, but the women in this film are given very, very little to work with.)

Especially notice Gyllenhaal. He's cursed by having an unspellable name and a face that looks way too much like Tobey Maguire's. Maguire is a very good actor, and he absolutely sells the Spider-Man franchise. But Jake Gyllenhaal is better, and eventually we'll all learn how to spell his name.

Here's what's unusually bad about The Day After Tomorrow: While the science is not completely stupid, the political stuff is offensively dumb.

There's the standard lie that Leftist idiots tell about our current administration -- that it's really run by the Vice-President. And the more subtle lie that this is an administration that ignores danger and refuses to take decisive action -- which is the opposite of the truth, considering that they're getting crucified for taking action too quickly and too decisively.

But that doesn't offend me -- it just proves that people in Hollywood can't see much with their heads ... er, in the dark. It will date this film and make it a laughingstock in only a couple of years.

No, the really offensive thing is that the crucial "message" moments are idiotic even in terms of the science they've taken such pains to explain to us.

When the astronauts look at the post-disaster Earth and say "the air has never been so clear," my wife and I both laughed. Visible smog has nothing to do with global warming. Carbon dioxide is invisible.

And then when the President says, at the end, that this was all caused by our wasting natural resources, all I can think is, Didn't the writer of that speech read the rest of the script? The disaster didn't happen because we ran out of stuff.

Dumb dumb dumb.

But it's a disaster movie, and they're supposed to be dumb. Compared to Poseidon Adventure or Towering Inferno or Armageddon or Independence Day, this movie is just fine. You'll enjoy it for the cool effects you've never seen on screen before. Just ... leave your brain at home, it'll only get in the way.

hee.

you can find this review, along with others [here.]

Comments

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

hee! that movie was so bad it was good. does that make sense? and i'm the type of person that will rewrite the script in my head so that the science COULD happen and make this something 'real'.

granted, I groaned during most of the political crap...

hee!

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

and sometimes it's fun to turn your brain off in a film and just enjoy the spectacle. it's so very....Roman.