The Day After Tomorrow

Robert and I have been Art Bell fans for, well forever. He has been for like 3 decades, I got pulled into Art Bell's late night world about 20 years ago. We are huge fans of Coast to Coast, his all night radio program of the weird and wild. (It's now hosted by George Noory and Art makes guest appearances from time to time) Art and Whitley Streiber supposedly wrote the book that this movie was made from, so you know we've been counting days until Memorial Day for this movie to open. I think it's been 3 months or more of total anticipation. Opening day - today - we were there (at Pueblo Tinseltown)

It was a fairly large disappointment. :( The IDEA was tremendous - and in the final credits we learn why - Art Bell and Whitley Streiber DID write a book about the a Superstorm, and "parts" of this movie were "based upon" that book. Ah, so the IDEA was theirs (and it's a good one) but the rest is .... usual disaster movie fodder.

Dennis Quaid is the lead in this, an actor we don't like. He bombed in The Alamo recently, and in Cold Creek Manor (peeeeew). But one thing made him look good in this one - Sela Ward (Dirty Dancing Havana Nights). A first year acting student could conjure up more actual emotion than she shows. Her son is in peril, possibly life and death, and she deadpans a dry eyed line about worrying about him. It so falls flat.

Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, October Sky) also stars, as Sam, the couple's son. He does a very good job. Emmy Rossum (Mystic River) does an equally good job as the young love interest. This couple is leaps and bounds better than their elders.

The star of the movie is the graphics and the mind bending effects - which are wonderful to see but they can't make an entire movie. If I lived in New York I think I would have been much more wowed even than I was - seeing these amazing sights in a city I was familiar with. I don't though, and never have been there, but the effects were still very cool. The idea was very cool.

The human drama messes alot of it up, and there are lots of idiot moments (you'll get to one scene where Robert and I said "SHUT THE DOOR!" "SHUT THE DOOR YOU IDIOT, you're letting all the heat out!! about 5 times. You'll know when you see it.) There are other things that simply don't make sense but you have to keep letting out rope to give them more poetic license.

The popcorn was EXCELLENT - we got it as it was being popped so it was majorly fresh and I remembered my white cheddar sprinkle cheese - yum!

Rating? I think we ended up with a 2. We simply did not care about any of the humans in this story and we forgot it as soon as we left the theater.