The Day After Tomorrow is the best environmentalist action movie since Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground. Earth Day in high school would have been much more fun if they'd just show us action movies. But the greatest message of the movie isn't even the environmental one, which it does indeed beat over the head. The film's real subversive message is about foreign affairs. By the time they get to reverse immigration and the president's agreements with Latin America, the film has solidified itself as a timeless classic. Look, this is a Roland Emmerich movie. You can interpret that however you must. I just can't hate a movie that simply delivers everything it promises, no matter how stupid it is. I can hate The Patriot because it's a ridiculous, pretentious abomination of Americana. But I don't hate Godzilla for being a big CGI monster movie, so I certainly don't hate this for being a big disaster/human pathos/political message picture that delivers on all counts.

Day After Tomorrow is nonstop action for the first half, and problem solving for the second. The first half alone has more action than all of Independence Day, which actually only had three action sequences. It's exciting, even though it borrows from every other elemental movie ever made.

It's Twister in L.A., The Perfect Storm in New York, Vertical Limit (and by default Cliffhanger) in... wherever there's snow and ice. But when the tornadoes are ripping through the Hollywood sign and bringing down buildings on top of news reporters, that's intense. This spectacle is a real threat. There are no funny flying cows here. People are in trouble. And when the flood washes through New York, it really feels like everyone's f***ed. They may not be original, but the action scenes are exciting. Even airplane turbulence makes a speeding drink cart as dangerous as the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

For all the scientific exposition, you actually learn some cool information. I didn't know what temperature froze helicopter fuel, or that old pay phones power themselves. That kind of forgives the obligatory first act science lesson.

By far the film's worst quality is the dialogue, from "If you don't act now, it's going to be too late" to "Just tell her how you feel" to the hero's plea for a chance to learn from his own mistakes, as nature has learned from its (or something like that). It's obvious they know they're doing a silly movie, with all the extreme destruction of landmarks and those political undertones. Why do they think we need to hear the characters spout cliches about social responsibility, meek romances and absentee fathers? You already care about the characters because the father is a noble scientist and his son is a genius smarter than his teachers.

Less intrusive, but more fun, are all the unanswered questions the film leaves open. How exactly did the U.S. plan to fit the entire bottom half of the country into Mexico? Where do the kids stranded in the library go to the bathroom for all the weeks they're waiting for rescue? And why didn't anyone suggest eating the dog for food?

Still, what will always linger in my heart about The Day After Tomorrow is the political heart. The president's admission of humility to nature at the end is far worse than Seagal's speech at the end of his movie. At least Seagal was quoting statistics. The immigration stuff is simply hilarious. I only hope Emmerich was smart enough to do that intentionally. If it were only a fluke, just a throwaway gag that had more relevance than anything else in the movie, I'd kind of be disappointed. I'd like to think this big spectacle formula picture that rips off everything that came before it actually had some purpose. That most of the action scenes are effective is just a bonus.