The Day The Earth Stood Still

Directed by: Scott Derrickson

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, Kathy Bates

Synopsis:

Keanu Reeves stars in an adaptation of the seminal 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) helms the story of an alien traveller, Klaatu (Reeves), who lands on Earth with a giant robot bodyguard, Gort, to deliver a warning of planetary destruction if humanity fails to bring peace to their civilizations and stop ruining the Earth through misuse of technology.



Review:

We at Flash-Bang like remakes or re-imaginings if they bring something new and exciting to a story concept. A good example? Dawn of the Dead. A bad one? This movie. A disaster movie? Sure, it is a disaster.

I want to get something out of the way, first; Keanu Reeves is not the factor as to why this film is so bad. For that ,I have to lay the blame squarely at the script writer, David Scarpa and his attempt at updating the original 1951 screenplay by Edmund H. North. No amount of acting can hide the fact that the dialogue is painful to listen to. Having said this, there are good points but sadly, precious few.

I liked Scott Derrickson’s direction on Emily Rose, so I had high hopes for this movie. I should have been forewarned at seeing the running time (104mins). As it turned out, the short running time is merciful.

The first fifteen minutes look promising; we see a bearded Keanu discover an orb back in 1928, explaining how the alien intelligence used human DNA to produce a liaison. It raises the first question; “why was the alien intelligence seemingly ignorant of mankind’s nature?” This becomes more confusing later as we discover a Chinese born ET that has been living with us humans for 60 odd years. Did he not report back? Scientists are corralled by the US government to give advice on what is about to happen including Jennifer Connelly’s astro-biologist. A sense of mystery is achieved as we witness the orb’s journey to Earth making the powers-that-be think an object is heading to collide with the Earth. Naturally, the population is panicking and even the scientists question what their priorities should be. In a rare moment where the script works, Connelly is on the phone to her stepson (Smith) and wants to talk, as she thinks she knows what’s coming. An officious looking female guard raps on the toilet stall door where Connelly is hiding, giving the impression that Connelly is in trouble and asks her if she’s using a mobile phone. Connelly admits to doing so, to which the guard replies; “Can I borrow it?” suddenly looking upset: A good character moment amongst a plethora of grating dialogue moments.

So, a massive globe lands, not in Washington but in Central Park. Once again a movie taps into the 9/11 fallout and I can’t say that it sat right with me in this movie. In fact later on in the movie as Manhattan is taken apart by a huge cloud of matter-eating insects I found the allegory quite insulting. Typically, the US government sends in the troops and is made to look like a belligerent war mongering organisation ready to fire first and then keep firing. I turned to my partner and said that this was so obviously written during the Bush administration. We agreed that we would expect President Obama to have the compassion and objectivity to arrive himself at the opportunity to carry out First Contact with an alien intelligence.

A “door” opens to the alien orb and out pops Keanu in a suit of “placenta” accompanied by a very tall metallic, CGI Gort. In a “shocking” moment a soldier fires off a round and hits Keanu and down he drops. We never saw that coming. Here is where the rot starts to set in, with the SFX. The CG Gort looks exactly that, CG. The fact that a 1950s physical effect looks better than a 2008 CGI effect says volumes about the care and attention to detail in this film. Helicopters simply flying from A to B look weightless and fake. The globe looks like something that would look good on a Christmas Tree. The cloud of matter eating insects, later in the movie, generates a good degree of doom but by then you might well not care.

I won’t waste much more time analyzing the plot, but the rest of the movie is punctuated by painful dialogue delivered by a mix of reliable actors and promising newcomers, like Jaden Smith. This young actor looks likely to have a great career ahead of him, similar to his Dad. The fact that his character kills every scene he’s in is not down to the actor. It appears that the screenwriter has tried to enter into M Night Shylaman territory by creating an intimacy in the storyline through the Mother and Son and their interaction with Klaatu, but the scenes halt the flow of the plot and infuriate. An example being; New York is being ravaged all around and Connelly stops to console Smith in their mutual loss. Hello? The World’s ending. Soon it won’t matter.

The environmental message is presented in a very vague way. The alien answer to the request of “Stop killing us. We can change.” is to issue what I presume is a giant electro-magnetic pulse. So, is the story writer trying to tell us that if we didn’t have all our technology then the world would be a better place? Not to argue, but how can a race progress to travel the stars like the intelligence judging us if we don’t move forwards scientifically? Doh!

Keanu does what he does best, plays a monotone and characterless part. We know he can act, he proved that in Street Kings and it takes a great measure of control to keep emotions in check the way he does. Sack your agent, Mr Reeves and get some better roles before you’re only known for roles similar to and including Neo.

Jennifer Connelly seems to do what she does best, spend most of the movie looking confused and bleary eyed. Kathy Bates is another who is painful to watch as a stereotypical Secretary for Defence clearly conceived during the Reagan administration.

A breath of fresh air is John Cleese playing a straight role for too short a time.

Verdict

Overall, this movie seems to have been heavily edited the wrong way around: they left the bad bits in and cut most of the exposition and elements that could have made it a much better movie. I can’t recommend it, sadly as I prefer to conduct positive reviews of films. This is one that I can’t review in that way. Again, I hope that Keanu Reeves is a bit more selective in his roles, not that this one would have looked bad on paper and who knows how much influence and control the studio had.

2/10 (Wayfarer)