By Ed Koch
Volume 73, Number 7 | June 16 – 22, 2004
FILM
Koch on Film
“The Day After Tomorrow” (-)
A really bad film. During the two hours, I felt as though I were watching one of the chapter movies from my youth in which nothing looked real and every chapter ended with someone in great peril. But in this movie, I really didn’t care about the people in distress since I felt absolutely no emotional bond with any of them.
Scientist Jack Hall (Dennis Quad) warns people early on that the buildup of greenhouse gases will change the climate and cause the ice caps to melt which they suddenly do. Los Angeles is hit with many destructive tornados, Tokyo suffers hail storms larger than the size of baseballs, and New York City is buried under l5 feet of ice. Jack Hall’s son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), goes to New York City and with hundreds of other people uses the public library at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street as a place of refugee. They ultimately burn the precious books to keep them warm. Smarter people would have used the many wooden tables and chairs for firewood.
To the ho-hum special effects are grafted with a couple of silly and boring stories. One involves Jack Hall lecturing the U.S. Vice President (a Dick Cheney look alike) on the U.S. rejection of the Kyoto Treaty. Interestingly, the liberals in the real world constantly berate President Bush for not supporting that treaty, but they never mention that the 95 U.S. senators unanimously rejected it because it exempted China and India from its coverage. Senator Ted Kennedy now attacks President Bush for not supporting the treaty even though he was one of the 95 who voted it down.
“The Day After Tomorrow” was supposed to be a summer blockbuster. It ended up being a very small firecracker not worth lighting.
– Ed Koch
