The trailer is stunning. The images of the destruction of New York City sent my pulse pounding and I wanted to see the movie badly. Plus the title, The Day After Tomorrow, has all the feel of a dystopian cult classic.

My expectations were fairly off the mark. Although the destruction of New York City was pretty wonderful, everything else was pretty bad. The dialogue was terrible: it was either exposition, exposition, exposition or overly melodramatic. The acting was wooden, but I think that could be the dialogue. Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal playing fairly familiar roles should do well, but their acting talent couldn't rescue such horrid dialogue. The plot was...

Would a scientist risk serious life and limb to rescue a small collection of ice samples? Perhaps if one was crazy enough. I suppose this sets the precident for some of the really insane things the scientist does later.

Would a vice president at an environmental conference in New Delhi, India listening to a lecture about severe weather effects caused by environmental mismanagement be so dismissive if there was a snowstorm in New Delhi? Baseball sized hail in Tokyo? Tornado activity the size of the last X-Men film in Los Angeles?

Does it make sense to allow the only scientist that predicted the catastrophe beforehand to travel the over 200 miles from Washington D.C. to New York City? Especially when there is a chance that he could be flash-frozen in the super-cold eye of the storm? No way. His ass would be quaranteened.

Can't you see? Plot holes that I could drive an alien ship from Roland Emmerich's Independence Day through. I liked that film, despite the bad plot and dialogue. His earlier film was corny and quirky and not intended to be serious. The Day After Tomorrow had very little playfulness, and I think the film was bad because of it.

Still, the destruction of New York City was very cool.