DVD: The Day After Tomorrow – Collector’s Edition

Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) warns that the next ice age is coming, but will anyone listen? Like a typical weatherman his estimates are off and the changes start to happen in weeks rather than years...

Let’s face it, this film is pretty silly in places. There are some tense moments during the human drama of the build-up, as director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, Independence Day) gets ready to destroy parts of the world again. But once that’s done the CGI weather takes over and it’s time to disengage your brain.

That aside, this release is all about piling on the DVD extras. The original features survive, including two audio commentaries that make you wonder how they came in under budget for the amount of scenes they reshot, rewrote or scrapped. The new additions include some (mildly) interesting featurettes gathered into four groups: pre-production; production; post-production; and the science. If you’re looking for a cult game, try to count how many times the visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas says “previz” in a five-minute featurette.

The highlight should be Two Kings and a Scribe, a 50-minute movie based on 40 hours of unlimited access filming. Unfortunately, this is spoiled by filmmaker James Christie Walker's determination to plant himself in the middle of it rather than simply letting the footage tell the story.

Buy The Day After Tomorrow – Collector’s Edition on DVD at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

DVD reviews by Matt Chapman