ARTS

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TUESDAY
JUNE 1, 2004

michigandaily.com/arts

DISASTER RELIEF NEEDED
DIRECTIONLEss 'DAY AFTER' LACKS CHARACTER APPEAL

By Forest Casey
Daily Arts Writer

American cinema has been with-
out an epic disaster flick for far too
long. The boom times of the '90s left
us with several of these big-budgeted
monstrosities:
"Jurassic Park" T
and its various The Day
s e q u e l s , After
" T w i s t e r," Tomorrow
"Armageddon," At Madstone and
"Titanic" and Quality 16
"Independence 20th Century Fox
Day." These
movies were more than just ordinary
films - they were events, public
spectacles. The public responded
with network television specials and
media campaigns that were them-
selves epic.
"The Day After Tomorrow" starts,
as all disaster epics do, with some
menial tech junkie, half asleep on the
job, discovering some kind of natural
anomaly: In this case, climate shifts
have broken apart an entire ice shelf
in Antarctica. The melting ice
changes the proportion of fresh to
salt water in the world's oceans, the
Atlantic's hot air currents are dis-
rupted, and peculiar weather
anomalies wreak havoc on the
world..
The thing is,
Jack Hall (a char-
acter as bland
as his name'
implies, played

by Randy Quaid) has found that a
similar increase in heat created the
last ice age 10,000 years ago. Because
weather is cyclical, he encourages the
American Vice President to begin
wide scale evacuation
plans. The
modeled
closely on
Dick Cheney,
dismisses Hall's
ideas, but the freak
weather freezing
most o f the
northern hemi-
sphere soon
changes his
mind.
Are these mete-
orological irregularities
worse than El Nino?
Actually, they're

"funny" rip-offs of better movies. A
massive block of ice the size of
Rhode Island breaks off of Antarcti-
ca, setting off an "armageddon" situ-
ation much like a certain massive
asteroid the size of Texas on a colli-
sion course with Earth. Multiple tor-
nados demolish Los Angeles,
throwing cars and humans about like
a certain movie with "twisters."
During a freak rainstorm, rich
urbanites try to commission a
city bus that can't help but
go a certain "speed." A
"titanic" Russian ocean liner
floats into New York City
after tidal waves submerge
all of the buildings. Mean-
while, starved wolves break
out of the cages at a New York
zoo, and trap a group of young-
sters on the boat. Robert Mul-
doon should have walked out
with a tranquilizer gun (for the
audience, not the wolves).
A strong Hollywood person-

Tobey Maguire called: He wants his vapid, worried stare back.

ality could have given the film a producer/writer/director Roland row," there is no clear star that isn't
better focus -someone with Emmerich's last movie. Without an cut into a contrived mess through
Y Pthe power to single- action hero so exuberant, so excited the hyper-editing required by the
handedly save a bloat- to be a part of the movie's conflict, MTV generation. It seems as if
ed epic like Will the main character really becomes Emmerich just wanted to get that
Smith did in "Inde- the special effects. Just like in messy "acting" thing out of the wa
pendence Day," "The Emmerich's previous disaster mas- and wow audiences with the special
Day After terpiece, this new film jumps effects.
Tomorrow" around between a motley crew of But maybe the lack of a solid
characters. However, in "Indepen- protagonist isn't the problem, for
dence Day," the actors were given the main nemesis of "Tomorrow"
plenty of chances to show emotion isn't an alien or an asteroid. Mother
and endear the audience Nature isn't someone you can just
to their plight, and, as a nuke (as was the solution for those
-sresult, viewers rooted for other-worldly foes), so the role of
their survival. In "Tomor- ass kicking everyman just isn't a
pertinent here. The nebulous, ill-
defined quality of "The Day After
M f C _HN c:2G A Tomorrow"'s central conflict leaves
the movie in a state of anticlimactic
Ae blandness and leaves Emmerich
with no real place to end the movie.
I H E A T R The opportunity to create the
f5Davd ' hier,,G.nera.ending for movie like this would
have been the dream of any Holly-
wood director. The possibility of
starting civilization anew after the
demolition of half of the world sim-
-A:r lt i ply intrigues the mind. Unfortu*
and nately, the audience is left with an
implausible letdown: a preachy
Presidential speech about conserva-
tion of fossil fuels that insults the
Iu + fe sI N 1 R, intelligence of the entire human
buuS J E tM ao .n race and doesn't have the impact of
tn bra'',H E a sinking lifeboat, let alone a
nuclear missile launched into an
alien mothership.
gd'g+gEgiiFr catIndeed, the world has waited too
long for another epic. And if Holly-
STUDENT RUSH TICKETS AVAILABLE! wood keeps churning out direction-
50% OFF 90 MINUTES PRIOR TO CURTAIN FREE OPERA TALK 7 less trash like "The Day After
At The Detroit Opera House Ticket Office Only. one hour prior The Spring Opera Season Tomorrow," it'll just have to keep
.uh tt ayailabiity to. perfomance, iOIN y

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or visit www.michiganopera.org.


71 T. T. I !, f -! -f I - ! I I ! I I T 1 1 7 1 1 - ! 1 f ! * , .