The Day After Tomorrow DVD: Review By justincase

From the epic filmmakers that brought us Independence Day and Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow paints yet another end-of-the-world survival-of-humanity tale. Faced with certain demise, when global warming causes a massive climate shift, human-kind must persevere and overcome the odds.

Amidst hail (ice-balls, really) the size of bricks and blizzard snow conditions of epic proportions, the people of Earth face a fight for their very survival. Of course, our protagonist, Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) must also fight to save his family (and, maybe, reclaim his marriage). When his son heads to New York for a braniac competition and is stranded in the bitter storm, Jack (who makes his living living on polar ice caps) must hoof-it wearing snow-shoes from Washington D.C. while the rest of the population is headed to... flood the Mexican border in the biggest immigration turn-about ever seen.

So, the massive storm hits, ostensibly wiping out tens of millions of people who couldn't evacuate to the south in time. Massive fast-freeze anomalies drop the temperature fast enough to flash-freeze like a black tuna in the freeze-hold of a Japanese fishing boat.

Here's the thing... I'm not going to drag this out any further.

The special effects are weak (and looks like the director pocketed the F/X money and had his middle-school kids drum up some polar ice-cap cave-ins and crazy weather on the family Macintosh). The script completely lacks imagination, emotion and reality. The acting is only sub-par. Even oscar-worthy performances couldn't have saved this dog, though. The entire story just lacks development and feels hurried.

Of course, a brutal week-long ice-age isn't supposed to be totally realistic. But this picture goes beyond "suspension of disbelief". Yeah, you have to let yourself go with the theory that this storm could move in and start an ice-age and then... what? Just go away? What a waste. It almost seems that the filmmakers have gotten too high on their own supply (do you hear me, Emmerich?) and are going to just dream up wacky disasters against which to drop-in human drama. It is simply astonishing that this thing could have done over $185 million in U.S. box office. We're all just a bunch of sheep.

So... I popped this disc into my PC and all of a sudden, I"m greeted by HOTLLAMA! What, you ask, is a "HOTLLAMA"? Well, I'll tell you. It's either some kind of horny camelid or some bunch of software programmers that got together smokin' some chronic one night and thought it would be cool to call themselves HOTLLAMA. Clearly, it is the latter.

In the end, I opted not to install any HOTLLAMA on my PC. I can do without anything like that on my hard-disk and am certain that it is not something I'd want to explain to my wife or young kids!

So... even after I put it in my machine, I get a message that says, and I quote:

"TO ACCESS THIS FEATURE, INSERT DISC INTO YOUR COMPUTER. THIS DISC WILL NOT WORK IN A CD-ROM DRIVE AND IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH APPLE MACINTOSH. YOU MUST HAVE A DVD-ROM DRIVE RUNNING WINDOWS 98SE OR HIGHER.

Lame... Not that I use Apple, but a LOT of people in the film industry do... Why the hell would they make it incompatible with Apple? What's more, even though I have DVD, WinXP Pro, the damn thing didn't just start up. Guess I need that HOTLLAMA after all. Screw that!. I don't need to see it that bad.

Commentary: by Roland Emmerich (director/co-writer) and Mark Gordon (producer)

and

Commentary: Jeffrey Nachmanoff (co-writer), Ueli Steiger (cinematographer), David Brenner (editor), Barry Chusid (production designer)

I didn't listen to the commentaries. The last thing I needed was to hear these self-appreciating disaster-flick flacks frost-heave massive loads of garbage at me. I would have MUCH rather seen some featurettes on this line-up that two commentaries. To hear it all, I'd have had to sit through the thing twice more. No thanks. If you check them out, let me know how they are.

Deleted Scenes:

There are two. That's right. 2 scenes. Even the lamest of DVDs has 5 or more. Yeah, the scenes are interesting, but... so what?

Audio Anatomy: Interactive Demo - 8 Tracks of Audio

Huh? I'm too tired for this sh*t.

The look of the disc is superb. On the 16x9 HD LCD from Philips, the progressive scan output from the Philips DVDR is crystal clear and brilliant. Not a transfer defect to be found. The picture, though, is something that requires fine widescreen like that provided by Philips gear in my hibernation chamber.

Brilliant, presented in 5.1, the sound was a bit wasted as I didn't fire up the whole system for it (this is what happens when you watch this stuff after the whole family has gone to bed... no subwoofer for me). Even through the sim-surround pumped out by the Philips LCD, though, the sound was crisp and holds you attentive.

Like the polar ice caps, this film is cold, bleak, devoid of life and something you'd do well to avoid.