The Day After Tomorrow

I went to see this movie today. It was only so-so, and there were quite a few points where the deeply liberal slant, the global warming lecture, and the obvious symbolism of the casting was annoying.

The guy cast as the president had a look that was an interesting combination of Bush and Gore. I think he looked more like Gore than Bush, but still I think his look had a lot to do with his casting.

The vice president casting was even more targeted, as that character is more important to the plot and had a lot more screen time. Apparently, they held a Dick Cheney look-alike contest, and this guy won. I can just imagine the glee that the writer and director felt putting a Cheney-like actor on the screen and have him act kind of like a jerk for quite some time. In my opinion, he was making sensible choices and merely ended up being faced with unexpected results, unexpected even to the heroic climatologist protagonist, but I doubt that was there intention. When later in the movie, the vice president gets on the TV and says the words, "I was wrong..." I could almost hear the cheering from the writer and director.

I have far less tolerance for these "agenda" movies than I used to when I was, how shall I say it, less politically aware? I had a vague idea that there was an agenda planned for this one before I went in, so I had mentally prepared myself to ignore that aspect and just enjoy the disaster movie, special effects aspects instead. Knowing ahead of time, it kind of worked, too. Except perhaps this blog entry speaks to the contrary.