What you missed: The Day the Earth Stood Still
‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’
Directed by:
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connolly, Jaden Smith
Rating: B-
By: Abram Brown
Staff Writer
As remakes come and go, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ will go down as neither the best nor the worst. It is simply average fare wrapped up in a dour and humorless filmmaking style.
In this modern re-imaging of the venerable 1951 classic, Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), an alien from an unknown origin, comes to Earth to tell everyone that the world is about to end, and its mankind’s fault. A scientist (Jennifer Connelly) with a child (Jaden Smith) in tow, set out to change the fate of the planet by convincing Klaatu to stop the aliens from destroying the planet.
‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ tries, and fails, to deliver a curt eco-warning and is weighed down by unfocused directing, a poor leading actress and cumbersome subplots.
Now, this was Scott Derrickson’s (‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’) first foray into helming a major motion picture, and proves himself to be a serviceable director but nothing else.
‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ suffers from large amounts of overt Hollywood liberalism and anti-Bushism, which hampers the film’s flow and depreciates its departing words.
The movie would have benefited greatly from the direction of a genre veteran who could help balance a message with extraterrestrial trappings. Derrickson never really comes to terms with the fact that he’s directing a sci-fi movie, or that somebody has really let him manage a real movie with a major budget.
The author responsible for the updated screenplay, David Scarpa (‘The Last Castle’), is also a newcomer. His approach leaves much to be desired.
Scarpa mismanages the characters. Michael Granier (Jon Hamm) seems to be on screen just to be killed off; Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese) doesn’t even manage to say anything Nobel Prize worthy or funny (what exactly is biological altruism, anyway?). And you can’t tell if Kathy Bates even had a chance to be horrible or if her character was just written that poorly.
As the film progresses, Scarpa then inserts far too much family melodrama. The terse relationship between stepmother (Connelly) and stepson (Smith) is completely overwrought and receives an inordinate amount of screen time.
Throw in a poor, wooden performance by Connelly and the audience is left wanting to see the end of Connelly’s poor efforts as an actress and her character’s poor efforts at being a mother.
Smith (‘The Pursuit of Happyness’) does however nearly steal the show and proves once again to truly be the son of his father with the film’s only spirited performance. His scenes with Reeves as he makes the case for Earth’s survival with truly childish innocence are the film’s single highlight.
On the other hand, Reeves and his character Klaatu both seemed nonplused by the goings on around them throughout the film. Reeves delivers what was asked of him, but his road to Hollywood rehabilitation continues.
The best part of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ or ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alien Spheres’ is surprisingly not the special effects. The arrival of Klaatu’s spaceship, a green, luminous orb, rivals the opening sequences of ‘Independence Day.’
GORT, Klaatu’s 60-foot cyber-organic sidekick, is pretty good, too, and proves to be the harbinger of doom. No joke.
And, despite the mismanagement of the characters, Scarpa updates the Cold War paranoid script of the original well enough.
Russkies and Yanks are replaced with carbon dioxide emissions as the movie carries definite green tones. The film manages to end adequately, keeping in line with its environmental theme.
Modern moviegoers should bite the bullet and just keep to the black and white original with its now incredibly outdated special effects, which now rank as classic. There is little truly remarkable or original about the new retelling, which could have really benefited from lightening up a bit.
Published on January 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm
