THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Texts on fiction writing are fond of telling writers that any story is allowed one major coincidence. This weather disaster epic is composed of a whole pile of coincidences. However, writer/director Roland Emmerich shares with Steven Spielberg a great talent for delivering such big movie fun that audiences are willing to forgive occasional or even more than occasional stretches in logistics. The result: an admittedly goofy popcorn picture that took in a stunning $86 million on its opening weekend.

Emmerich indulges in his first coincidence in his first scene. Science guy Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid, who has survived a mid-career slump quite nicely) is gathering evidence on an Antarctic ice shelf with his team when a giant crack forms in the ice right across their camp, giving Hall an opportunity for some heroics. This reinforces Hall's theory that global warming could tilt the planet's balanced climate into another Ice Age. Unfortunately, the conservative US Vice President (Kenneth Welsh) won't listen to Hall's warnings, even when the famous Prof. Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) agrees with Hall. But when Hall's predictions begin to come true at an accelerated rate, resulting in freak super-storms destroying landmarks worldwide, even the White House has to take notice. By that time it's too late to evacuate the entire United States (Canada is written off early on), and President Blake (Perry King) follows Hall's advice to get everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line to move to Mexico.

To avoid filling the remaining running time with shots of traffic jams and folks shivering next to fires as massive ice storms march across the Earth, Hall's teenage son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) just happens to be on a school trip to New York City when the tidal wave strikes, and he and his chums become stranded, holing up in the public library with your basic cross section of humanity. This gives Sam a chance to engage in some heroics, too, and gives Hall a chance to heroically march off into the blizzard to rescue his son. As it turns out, Hall's heroic trek has absolutely nothing to do with whether Sam survives, but the script seems to think it's terribly important.

While most scientists agree that pollution has contributed to holes in the ozone layer, and that this has some effect on climate, we still have far too little data on what the causes and effects are to decide anything about it. After all, didn't the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens alone cause more disruption to the atmosphere than every nuclear bomb explosion combined? Despite the lack of data, people have of course been speculating on the effects of global warming for decades, but the film's main stretch and Big Concept is far beyond the wildest of these speculations. Even if global warming is having a dramatic effect on our climate, it's hard to accept the idea that most of the world could freeze from it in what seems like days. But Emmerich makes the journey so much fun that audiences are willing to let it go. Let's face it: it's a real hoot to see Los Angeles destroyed by tornadoes, focusing specifically on the deaths of a few TV weather men. We love to see any movie where the world ends, especially if we get to see a major city swamped by tidal waves, buried by blizzards, and flash frozen by temperature drops. The special effects are wonderful, selling the story's entire huge spectacle, with the exception of some shots where the CGI wolves chasing Jake Gyllenhaal look unacceptably phony. With all of its technical excellence and solid performances, outrageous events such as when the tanker floats down the streets of New York are not only accepted, but to be celebrated. Sure, the film is presents one farfetched event after another, but so does a circus.

One of the most crowd-pleasing moments comes without any spectacular f/x. Kenneth Welsh, Dr. Watson to Matt Frewer's Holmes in a series of TV movies, is here a dead ringer for VP Dick Cheney, and audiences get a big kick out of the scenes where the US government must meekly ask Mexico to open its borders to refugees from the north. To the liberal writer/director's credit he doesn't overplay the VP and dullard President's foibles to the point that they become cartoons, as he did with the mayor of New York in GODZILLA, allowing them each to have a chance for moments where they realize their mistakes and have their own moments of quiet heroism.

Wrapping their keepcase in a nifty 3-D cardboard sleeve, Fox gives DAY AFTER TOMORROW solid treatment on DVD. Though a fullscreen edition is available, we recommend the compositions provided by the widescreen edition even for smaller screens. The soundtrack, full of roaring wind and crackling ice effects, comes alive on all soundtracks, and those that have DTS systems may want to keep a sweater handy when the movie chills.

Emmerich and enthusiastic producer Mark Gordon are surprisingly up front about the movie's faults in their commentrak, pointing out such obvious audience peeves as when characters shed their gloves and scarves in sub-zero weather. But they give plenty of time going over the film's strengths, even when they confess that some things only work in movies. A much dryer track is provided by co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff, DP Ueli Steiger, editor David Brenner and production designer Barry Chusid, who give us a nice variety of accents and further information, but as much entertainment. They touch on some logistic flaws as well, such as the fact that we don't see smoke coming from the NYC survivors' fires, but they're quick to forgive these details as well.

With the feature given six different audio tracks, it should be obvious how important sound is to a movie like this, but the disc takes things a step further for a DVD first. One scene is repeated with eight separate tracks, which you can isolate to illustrate music, dialogue and sound effects.

Of course, with all this digital real estate being given over to the feature, not much room is left on the disc for more extras. A couple of interesting but distracting alternate versions of a couple of sequences are included, but while some DVDs might throw in an extra disc with Making-Of featurettes, Fox takes another route by providing these only via a DVD-ROM weblink. As these featurettes are superfluous anyway, the extra weight left off of DVD shelves is appreciated.

But is this really the end, or will the film's success bring us more adventures of paleoclimatologist Jack Hall? Will we ever see THE DAY AFTER THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE?