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Director: Roland Emmerich

Release Date: 27 May 2004

Tagline: This year, a sweater won’t do.

Main Cast:

Dennis Quaid … Jack Hall

Jake Gyllenhaal … Sam Hall

Emmy Rossum … Laura Chapman

Roland Emmerich is responsible for some of the worst movies ever made yet somehow they seem to make money. If you ever needed proof that the average movie goer is happy to watch poorly scripted and utterly ridiculous tosh, then look at Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and, one suspects, 10,000 B.C. (at the time of writing, the latter has only just been released).

Out of the three films mentioned above, this one is the best. Not that it makes it good, mind you. It’s just not as dreadful as the others.

I know that this is a ‘disaster’ film, but the disaster should be the plot – not the film itself! Seriously though, I know that although you often have to suspend belief for such films, there is proof that they can be made with believable stories (The Towering Inferno is perhaps the best example).

The story is utterly ridiculous. Perhaps my favourite moment is where our heroes go into the ship to find medicine for the potentially fatally ill Laura. As if they weren’t in enough peril (in the middle of a climate catastrophe with a dying friend), there are some wolves (at least they look like wolves) that follow them into the ship and attack them.

Having said all that, as a ‘popcorn’ film, TDAT works reasonably well. However, it totally lacks any sense of danger and tension which are crucial elements of a good disaster film. Somehow you just know that all the main characters will live, and everything will be all right in the end. As is customary with Emmerich’s films it is riddled with clichés and is a fine example of a corny movie.

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