I’m going to see it the day after tomorrow.
Is Denis Quaid one of the underpants gnomes?
Step one Walk to NYC and get to son who is held up in the NY Public Library
Step two I’m not really sure about, didnt’ even bring an extra jacket for him.
Step Three Happy Ending!
The bad thing about this film is that unlike ID4 where you kill the aliens and you start to rebuild,there is no happy ending. You get the suvivors out of the north and guess what? You still have 10,000 years of crapiness to live through.
Oh and I think a bona-fide scientist would tell his son he HAS to show his work.
I too found this surprisingly enjoyable even though the dialogue was horrendous. I basically MST3K’d right through it.
Enjoyable bits:
- The Dick Cheney lookalike
- Pretty Jake Gyllenhaal for me and pretty Emmy Rossum for others.
- The dinghy’s going out - actually gave me chills. Bravo Bilbo, err… Ian Holm.
- The NY tidal wave.
- So THIS is what it takes to forgive 3rd world debt!
Snorts of derision:
- The U.S. president staying behind until it’s too late.
- The wolves.
- Run, it’s the Freeze Monster!
- Relationship advice during a global disaster.
- Mr. I Love Books.
Random commentary
- I usually have a good “dead meat” radar but this movie completely threw me off.
- Realizing most U.S. citizens from red states would be able to be evacuated yet blue states were popsicles o’ death. Take that liberal propaganda!
- Dennis Quaid’s character drove a hybrid!
- NY citizens = ultimate survivors.
Dennis Quaid would make a great Indiana Jones, should it be realised that Harrison Ford is just way beyond doing another sequel.
The special effects were not bad. I was particularly impressed by the courtesy of the tidal wave to stop at the end of the street, giving the girl time to go retrieve another’s purse (after all, the taxicab woman needed her passport to go somewhere). And my heart stopped when the Hollywood sign, of ALL THINGS, got destroyed to smithereens! What directorial ingenuity! Speaking of the director, congratulations to him for saving money by using wolves from “An American Werewolf in London.” Those extra bucks saved were obviously used to turn out a riveting plot and snappy dialog!
sigh The special effects were good, for the most part, but so devoid of emotion that I could feel myself looking at pictures on a screen. When I think of great moments of special effects, I find images that not only took my breath away, but made me feel something. The space station in 2001. The mothership in Close Encounters. The first time we saw the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Part of the reason why those scenes were so spectacular were due to plot, character development, and dialog, the three features sorely missing in this flick. A decent B-movie will deliver on that.
I rate this movie two “caws” (for craptacular).
I luuuuuuuuuuv disaster movies. The worse the better. What this movie lacked was enough disaster. I remember seeing in the previews snow falling in India and that scene didn’t make it in the movie. What about all the neat stuff happening in other parts of the world? Where’s the global impact? Why am I watching 6 people in a library argue about what books to burn when so many other world landmarks are being spectacularily destroyed at this very moment?
I happily threw away science when I sat down to watch this movie so I could thoroughly enjoy the special effects, and instead they gave me character development. For shame. The killer tidal wave was awesome, though. They should have done another hour of CGI just like that.
/likes what I likes
The movie I saw had snow falling in India. I don’t know what preview you’re speaking of, though, but it definately was snowing when Bilbo hailed a cab for Doc Holiday.
One of the effects bothered me. When the tidal surge was approaching NYC, it was shown rising up to the armpit or so of Lady Liberty, yet it only reached up to about the 5th or 6th floor of the buildings right on the waterfront. Seems like a major hieght discrepancy that someone should’ve caught. I don’t the deminsions of the Statue, so maybe I’m wrong, but I seem to remember it being pretty damn tall.
Plus, as the surge travelled up the harbour/river, shouldn’t it break? Then Keanu and Patrick could surf it!
Especially when you include the base and the height above sea level of the island.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I was wondering what kind of crazy stuff would have happened where I live (bay area California). I know they had Los Angeles get hoovered up by tornadoes, but what about the rest of it? Did California become Tornado alley or something? Or should I anticipate getting washed away by some tidal wave that can wash 30 miles inland?
No it wasn’t. Florida wasn’t part of the big white snowy part at the end of the movie when they showed the Earth from space. I remember distinctly.
No, I think as a previous poster said–the sled was for carrying all their crap along for the journey. I’m pretty sure he just wanted to be in NY with his son because he knew how to survive in very cold climates and felt he could take care of him. I never got the impression he was going to bring him back on his own or anything.
Well, that just raises the question of why they were out walking at the end of the movie. I suppose they might just have been walking to where the helicopter could pick them up, but they seem to have strolled quite a ways for no reason.
Woo-hoo, my “broken hip” entry was first!
I liked it OK.
I thought the geek interaction was pretty good.
The thing that bothered me the most:
Why are they burning books when there is LOTS of wood furnature around???
Ok, start the fire with paper, but you are going to get better heat from wood.
Brian
I did. It never occurred to me that he was going to traipse up there just to be with him; I thought his promise was that he was going to come get him. But if his intent really was just to stay up there with him - away from Dr. Mom and all - then that decision just wouldn’t ring true for me, either.
I saw a trailer for this film on UK TV the other day and while it was showing the tornados and the tidal waves flooding into NY, what did I spy at the bottom of the screen?:
“Warning: Contains extended scenes of peril.”
Jesus wept but that spoiled the whole idea of seeing it for me. I’d be sitting there saying to myself, ‘Hmm, this scene’s slightly dangerous but does it count as “peril”?’
Is this new or have I just not noticed these dumbass warnings before?
Well I assumed his main thing was to make sure his son survived the storm. After the storm, sure then they would see about evacuating or whatever–but that wasn’t really the key issue.
The key issue being… he made a promise!
In the last scene, the southern edge of the snow cover was around Charleston, SC, stretching west to Santa Fe, NM. Couldn’t see California clearly.
I want to know what, if anything, happened in the Southern Hemisphere. Are Brazil, Australia and South Africa going to be the new superpowers?
Saw it yesterday, and didn’t hate it. It was good disaster fun. I live in a fairly large Hispanic area, and there was a good deal of laughter during the Mexico border comment.
Comments:
[ul][li]Was that a tidal wave, or was that a storm surge from the hurricane-ish storm?[/li][li]Where’d they get dry clothes in the NYPL? [/li][li]The stupid lady behind me had to yell out at Quaid’s “where’s the artic gear?” with, “it’s not snow, it’s water - duh!”. Lady, this is the most mindless movie of all time, and you *still * can’t pay attention to the -160 degree comment?!?[/li][li]I have to backup **OpalCat ** on this - Florida was definitely not frozen.[/ul] [/li]
I doubt anything. The imbalance was in the North Atlantic currents. Did the Ice Age affect the SH?
Well, I thought it was good ‘n’ bad. As in, I wanted a crappy disaster movie, and I got one in spades. What I most appreciated about it was that it moved along at a pretty good clip, and dispensed with any dialogue that didn’t advance the plot at least a little.
Stupid things that didn’t make sense even forgiving the bad science:
Since when do tidal waves roll in, but fail to roll back again?
How was Dennis Quaid able to stop his companions’ fall with his ice axe, ON GLASS, when he could brush away the snow to see what was going on through the same damned glass?
How was the soldier that stepped out of the frozen, downed helicopter able to move his bare hand away from the helicopter’s doorframe and even move his fingers before he froze? Wouldn’t they have stuck to the metal?
My favorite line was when the student was trying to fix the radio and he made some comment about being the president of the math, chess and science clubs - and that if there was a bigger nerd in the library to find them.
That really tickled me for some reason.