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Day After Tomorrow, The
20th Century Fox Film Corporation


5.7

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 152 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for intense situations of peril

Starring Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok, Jay O. Sanders, Sela Ward, Austin Nichols, and Arjay Smith

An abrupt climate change has cataclysmic consequences for the entire planet. (20th Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| Sci-fi \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Roland Emmerich (also story) Jeffrey Nachmanoff
DIRECTED BY:	Roland Emmerich
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 12, 2004 Video: October 12, 2004 Theatrical: May 28, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	117 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Empire Colin Kennedy

Everybody is good at one thing, they say; for Emmerich, it's destruction.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

This highly entertaining spin on eco-catastrophe could turn the most meteorologically challenged among us into Weather Channel freaks.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Despite the clunky bits, "Tomorrow" still manages to deliver the blockbuster goods.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Yes, the movie is profoundly silly. What surprised me is that it's also very scary. The special effects are on such an awesome scale that the movie works despite its cornball plotting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The spectacle, which is colossal and at times staggering to behold, begins within two minutes of the fade-in and keeps coming until the finish. I thought I'd seen it all. I hadn't.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Better than his previous films, The Day After Tomorrow plays to Emmerich's strengths, making for a thrill ride that rarely disappoints when it matters.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A disarmingly pulpy, eye-popping disaster movie during its first half, and an increasingly dull survival melodrama during its second.

Film Threat Clint Morris

As with "Independence Day," Emmerich has filled his picture with some of the best actors around, only this time the characters seem a bit more 'humane' than, say, Jeff Goldblum's geeky scientist, or Bill Pullman's gung-ho President.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Several of the special-effects sequences -- a Tokyo hailstorm, a system of tornadoes ripping through L.A. (and tearing up the Hollywood sign), a tidal wave breaking on the East Side and washing through the canyons of Manhattan -- are just dandy.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Emmerich’s sense of irony has rarely been so pointed, and The Day After Tomorrow, for all its obvious cataclysmic set-pieces and stock characterizations, is nothing if not timely.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Delivers the expected thrills and groans.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

The real top billing, what audience-goers are obviously shelling out to see, is the computer-generated chaos, and as they should: Digital technology has caught up with our collective imaginations Now More Than Ever.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Day After Tomorrow is filled with bad dialogue, stock peril situations, and sketchy character development, but it's a big enough spectacle that those things don't completely derail the film's capacity to be enjoyed.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

I'm not saying that a date with this picture is all pleasure; but it's not all guilt either.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Disaster movies, from "The Poseidon Adventure" to "Towering Inferno," are impossible to take seriously and "Day" is no exception - it's simply a fast-moving pageant of end-of-the-world eye candy.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Never mind the cool, convincing effects (and they are cool), The Day After Tomorrow teems with illogical action, improbable coincidences. It's pure escapist fare, a popcorn gobbler.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

This often entertaining movie mixes grand, epic effects and amazing visualizations of catastrophe with a sappy family-in-crisis plot that would look hackneyed in a '60s Disney TV movie.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

It's the Weather Channel on steroids.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

The really good news is that the disaster money shots are some of the finest ever filmed.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A decent disaster pic comes down to the handful of colorful individuals who will live (or, depending on the prominence of their billing, die), as it has since the days of chewy disaster meatballs like ''The Towering Inferno'' and ''Earthquake.'' And the heaviest lifting in Emmerich's production falls to Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

All this amounts to a badly wasted opportunity, since global warming is a serious issue that deserves thoughtful treatment. So stay home and read a scientific journal instead. This is a disaster movie that lives up to its label.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The glacierization of half of the world's inhabited land is contemplated with barely a hint of horror. In fact, it looks kind of cool.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Really bad movies can be fun, and the dialogue here often attains a level of joyful inanity.

USA Today Mike Clark

Packed with digs at Bush-Cheney that even Democrats could find heavy-handed, the movie's lumbering approach reminds us that, OK, Emmerich did "Independence Day" -- but also 1998's "Godzilla," which began sinking back into the sea in week two.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

What most hurts The Day After Tomorrow is its unfortunate, lecturing tone.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Emmerich does know his way around an action scene -- there's an exciting sequence in which Sam and his buddies run from wolves while looking for meds inside the huge ship that pulls up alongside the library. But he's a master of disaster with no people skills. The characters in The Day After Tomorrow are fantastically stupid.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Needless to say, the movie fails as a cautionary tale. But it fulfills its summer air-conditioning duties with flippant ease, and its enjoyably cloddish attempts at political relevance add a fascinating layer of incongruity.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

While it's marvelously refreshing to observe Mother Nature obliterating L.A. and New York along with caricatures of ghastly world leaders, almost everything good is in the trailer, save perhaps brief run-ins with malevolent wolves and Ian Holm.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Even by the standards of disaster movies, The Day After Tomorrow is irretrievably poor: a shambles of dud writing and dramatic inconsequence which left me determined to double my consumption of fossil fuels. [7 June 2004, p. 102]

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The generally competent B-list actors are hobbled by cliché-ridden dialogue but do their best to react in remotely plausible ways each time the script nails them with some new melodramatic contrivance.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

The story is too silly, too woefully underwritten, to stake a claim on seriousness.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Seldom has grandeur struggled so mightily, and fruitlessly, with rampant goofiness.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Despite the fact that The Day After Tomorrow is harnessed to the very real threat of global warming, it's still just a big, dumb movie, another Hollywood entertainment that, instead of tweaking and teasing our brains for fun, leaves us feeling thick and stupid.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Utterly shatters the illusion with a trite plot, banal dialogue, clunky sentimentality and, worst of all, a sort of narrative arbitrariness.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

An exceptionally stupid movie.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Emmerich now directs entirely in watered-down Spielbergisms, and his storytelling skills, never strong, have gone slack. His talent for stretching a concept that can be described in 10 seconds into a feature-length movie, on the other hand, remains impressive.

Slate David Edelstein

When it comes to weaving personal stories in and out of the special-effects set pieces, the director has the most colossal antitalent since Ed Wood Jr.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The catastrophe is so pulped and exaggerated that uninformed audiences will safely assume that global warming is just a Democratic scare tactic.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Don't ask whether or not you should take The Day After Tomorrow seriously. Don't take it at all.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 152 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steve P. gave it a7:
I loved this movie; it is a modern-day Plan 9, a B movie with all the usual clunky plots. The wolves are missing? They'll show up again... on a ship in the middle of Manhattan! The guy says "...and I'll go, too"? Yes, he's going to die. We're trapped in a building full of wood... so all we can burn is books! Come on, people! This movie is brilliant... just not the way the writers intended. Grab some popcorn, rent this movie, and enjoy!

Vasiliy H. gave it a10:
One of the best films I've ever seen. Atmoshpere is very good I felt like i am in the cold New York and tried to stay alive.

Tim X. gave it a10:
This is not just some ordinary disaster movie. For those who pick out the little problems like the special effects, you are plainly: DUMB. Something similar to this will happen sometime in the future, when people are still on Earth, and at that time, even the special effects in the movie wouldn't be able to compare to the force of Mother Nature. Just wait and see.. or maybe let your grandchildren see, and pay the price for your consequences.

Louis's brother gave it a10:
Not only is this movie an edge-of-your-seat thriller, it also spreads the message of the threat of global warming clearly.

Riren gave it a5:
Pseudo-science spins a new apocalyptic disaster story that becomes increasingly less likely as the movie goes on. All of the characters are archetypes (loveable poor guy; lovestricken handsome young man; indignant snob; headstrong cop; bitter scientist; et. al.), so you can walk into this movie and know all you'll need to know about everyone without having to think. You'll have to leave your disbelief at the door, though, as you see wolves turned into maneaters after a day of freedom, and people literally running from cold that is creeping across the floor. The computer effects are largely beautiful, and certainly deserve commendation. Unfortunately unlike other, older disaster movies, since cold is the killer here, prepare to see a lot of slower, more agonizing deaths, and more sad corpses - things that hurt the escapist entertainment of such a movie. Its best point, like the novel World War Z, is the rare moments where this science fiction premise overlaps our real world and puts a creative spin on our current prejudices, like people illegally crossing the border INTO Mexico, or burning books for warmth. If creative touches like that were more frequent, it might be a really good movie. As it is, it's a take-it-or-leave-it disaster movie that's somber entries into the genre are usually frantic.

Rachel D. gave it a10:
I think this was a very effective film that had an impact on the audience, The special effects were brilliant. I think it was a brilliant way to get the point across that global warming is completely unpredictible and could happen in our lifetime, even if at times the special effects could be some what "dramatic".

Travis P. gave it a0:
Ok, so wolves held in captivity and fed not less than 12 hours ago, suddenly when freed (and apparently because it's cold) start attacking people with a ferociousness that even completely wild wolves would never attain. Then how about a hero who understands the situation better than anyone else and then turns his back on what's left of devastated humanity to go BACK and search for his son because of some stupid guilt problem. And by the way, if things were freezing so fast that you could see frost progress along walls and doors and such, the air would be unbreathably frozen long before they could run. This movie was crap.

Day After Tomorrow, The 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Day After Tomorrow, The
20th Century Fox Film Corporation