Genre: action, drama, sci-fi, thriller

The Day After Tomorrow

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Written by Roland Emmerich

and Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Starring Dennis Quaid,

Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum

Classification: PG

Rating: **½

Freud would have a field day with Roland Emmerich. Born in Germany yet beloved in Tinseltown, Emmerich is a director who earns a fat living making big movies that trash American monuments to the sheer delight of American audiences. In the vapid Independence Day, he blew up the White House. In the god-awful Godzilla, he razed the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and Madison Square Garden. Now, in The Day After Tomorrow, he shreds the Hollywood sign, buries the Statue of Liberty up to her celebrated torch, and then gets seriously cold-hearted -- turning everything above the Mason-Dixon line into one massive popsicle. Hmm, ponder the subtext only if you dare.

The text, as ever, is far less challenging, although the disaster du jour feels a lot more credible on this go-round. So, in fact, does the whole picture, largely because the opponent is well-chosen. We're not doing battle with petty aliens here, or a mere giant lizard, but with an enemy much nearer and dearer to our heart: the weather, the crazy weather. And the report isn't good. According to Jack the crack climatologist (Dennis Quaid), global warming has paradoxically led to a cooling trend and -- to put it delicately -- the trend appears to be accelerating. Pretty soon, Jack has dispensed with delicacy and cut to the chase: "This storm is going to change the face of our planet. When it's over, we'll be in a new ice age." It's enough to make you cancel your dirty weekend.

Or so you might think. Apparently, Jack's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is made of sterner stuff. Together with his sweetie Laura (Emmy Rossum), they push on with their planned excursion to New York. Teenagers these days, they're almost as nutty as the weather. Of course, the ice storm is only brewing at this stage -- we've got hours to go before the climate climaxes. In the interim, Emmerich and his trusty special-effects team are engaged in their own global warm-up act, cranking out a rising crescendo of meteorological oddities -- scattered snow flurries in New Delhi, hail the size of basketballs in Tokyo, that sign-shredding tornado in Hollywood, punctuated by a wee bit of a chill (-150 F) in Scotland, where small craft and short kilt warnings are in effect.

Back in the Big Apple, it never rains but it pours. Sloshing through the streets, Manhattanites are submerged to their cellphones, at least until a tidal wave makes an especially generous contribution to the high-water mark, whereupon pedestrian traffic gives way to a Russian freighter literally cruising Fifth Avenue. But give Emmerich his due. As weather reports go, this is pretty damned impressive -- the computer-generated sights are grippingly real. And they get even better when the rain turns to snow, and the water to ice, and when, up in the balcony seat of space, a crew of astronauts looks down upon the contorted Earth below -- it makes for a hell of an aerial shot.

By now, even those teens have called it a weekend and found refuge in the most unlikely of adolescent sanctuaries -- the public library. There, huddled together for warmth, they keep the fire stoked with tomes by Nietzsche (more subtext to mull) -- anyway, what better place for a book-burning than a summer blockbuster? However, the chief librarian is drawing the line at the Gutenberg Bible. Clutching a precious edition to his sparrow chest, our throwback intones, "As far as I'm concerned, the written word is mankind's greatest invention." Does that mean mankind will pass on the flick and wait for the novelization?

As for weatherman Jack, he's putting on Arctic gear and setting out to rescue his only son. His doctor wife (Sela Ward) would have come along, but she's too busy caring for a young boy stricken with cancer. And watch out for the wolves -- sensing danger, an entire pack has quit the zoo and seems in a snarly mood. Did I mention that it never rains but it pours?

If this sounds silly, it is -- impressive sights and silly sounds are the yin and yang of an Emmerich movie. But there's a happy difference this time. At least some of the laughs are deliberate, and a few have a nice political edge. Like the neo-con Vice-President who can't stop slagging the Kyoto Accord even when the sky is falling. Or like the Mexican government that, in response to the desperate hordes fleeing south toward a warmer future, decides to shut its borders to illegal American immigrants.

I'm not saying that a date with this picture is all pleasure; but it's not all guilt either. My guess is that, waking up the morning after The Day After Tomorrow, you won't have much trouble forgiving yourself.