Michael Moore meets Irwin Allen courtesy of "The Day After Tomorrow," a curious hybrid of sociopolitical cautionary tale and good old-fashioned disaster flick complete with state-of-the-art special effects and the kind of hokey dialogue that, for better or worse, often tends to go with the territory.

While all producer Allen needed were capsized cruise ships ("The Poseidon Adventure"), flaming skyscrapers ("The Towering Inferno") and killer bees ("The Swarm") to have audiences quivering in their seats, filmmaker Roland Emmerich has upped the ante considerably, dealing with no less than an imminent deep-freeze of the entire, globally warmed planet.

Ultimately, the message aspect and the human drama aspect aren't nearly as persuasive as the truly awesome special effects, which aren't burdened by hokey dialogue that lands with all the subtlety of one of the picture's mighty hailstorms.

Despite the clunky bits, "Tomorrow" still manages to deliver the blockbuster goods, though it's easy to see why Fox could be a little uncertain of the outcome.

In light of the current international political climate, not to mention an ongoing spate of natural disasters closer to home, are people willing to rush out and see what portions of the country are experiencing in what's left of their own back yards?

Then again, the seismic ratings generated by NBC's "10.5" miniseries would seem to bode well for "Tomorrow" particularly given the picture's comparatively compact $125 million budget.

Mother nature may be the real star of the show, but Dennis Quaid provides the trusted human element as Jack Hall, a climatologist whose research on the subject of global warming would indicate that a catastrophic shift in the world's climate could occur much sooner than anybody had anticipated.

His warnings fall on the deaf ears of the current administration, as personified by Vice President Becker (Kenneth Welsh), a man who bears an unmistakable resemblance to a certain Mr. Cheney.

But a series of freak weather occurrences -- snow falling in New Delhi, record hurricane-force winds whipping Hawaii, hail the size of Toyotas pelting Tokyo -- suggest that Hall's forecast of disaster could actually be mere days away.

In short order, multiple tornadoes sweep through Los Angeles, picking off the letters of the Hollywood sign and paring down the famed Capitol Records building.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, the mother of all floods takes Manhattan, followed by precipitously plunging temperatures. Among those fleeing into the Manhattan Public Library for shelter is Hall's son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who's in town for an academic competition.

As a mass evacuation sends half the country scurrying for the Mexican border, Hall heads in the opposite direction, pledging to his son that he'll come and get him before the new Ice Age beats him to it.

Although it lacks the us-vs.-them bravado of Emmerich's "Independence Day," the film is a considerable improvement over the last time he laid Gotham to waste with his noisy 1998 "Godzilla" remake.

Environmental activists will certainly applaud the film's message, even if it's accompanied by some of that corny dialogue provided by Emmerich and co-screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff.

Credit visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas and production designer Barry Chusid with delivering the film's biggest bang for the buck -- the staggering visuals, which combine mammoth set-pieces (constructed on Montreal soundstages) that were considerably enhanced by Digital Domain's CGI assist. Many of those sequences, including a frostbitten New York, are a thing of nightmarish beauty.

There's also strength in cinematographer Ueli Steiger's framing and composer Harald Kloser's quietly stirring score, which is reasonably low-key for the genre. Even more remarkably restrained is the decision not to include the obligatory love theme, no matter how tempting it might have been to have Maureen McGovern singing, "There's got to be a morning after the day after tomorrow."