Porting this over from my myspace page. Why not
Regardless of the fact that the main selling points for The Day the Earth Stood Still were Keanu Reeves and the fact it's a rehashing of a classic, I had pretty high hopes for this. I just refreshed myself on the original and remembered how rad it is, especially for a movie made 55 years ago. Lo and behold, a strong start, followed by a faltering middle, then ended with an utterly incomprehensible conclusion had me pulling my hair out of my scalp begging for a time machine so I could do one of two things: get the hour and a half of my life back, or punch the producers in the throat BEFORE this thing got green lit (in which case my time machine would also be able to teleport me. Thankfully, that's how I built it, duh.)
Like I said, strong start. Much in the same fashion as the original, a UFO is discovered barreling towards Earth at 3 TIMES 10 TO THE SEVENTH METERS PER SECOND!! Hopefully the largeness gets across just how badly they were trying to sound smart by repeating this over and fucking over again. Anyway, it lands in Central Park and obviously our Army straight up invades its space with everything under the sun. It's essentially the same scene as the original, but with some neat upgrades. Following suit, Klaatu (Reeves) escapes from government custody and finds Dr. Benson (Jennifer Connelly) who drives him all over to wherever it is he needs to go, all the while trying to convince him to not destroy the human race.
After that it just becomes a muddled mess, and the third act just made me want to vomit.
The list of things I liked about the movie is much shorter than the list of reasons for said time machine excursion so let's go over them first. I really didn't mind Keanu until the end. It really was a perfect roll for him, mainly because it required no emotion whatsoever. That being said, the always gorgeous Jennifer Connelly was in true form as per usual and delivered a solid performance, though when any REAL emotion was needed, both actors were a little weak. The new ship was pretty rad looking, and Gort was sick as well. Generally speaking, from a technical stand point this was a solid flick.
Apparently though great acting isn't a gene passed generation to generation because every time Jaden Smith was on screen I wanted to suck on the business end of a shotgun. Now I give him a little breathing room because he's young, but I've seen some amazing child actors and he would be better off running full speed into a wall of flaming alligators than he would if he ever acted again. The movie would have been much better if he had been an interested and helpful kid throughout instead of a whiny douche the whole time.
Now on to what ruined this movie for me. The original (I refer back to it often because I am always baffled by people who fuck movies up so bad when they have awesome source material) story was that Klaatu came to Earth with a warning and an ultimatum. He warned that if our destructive technology were to reach beyond our planet, then a sort of galactic police would be forced to destroy us before we got a chance to destroy them. Then he left. In this version, Al Gore might as well have rolled in and said "HOLY FUCK DUDE'S WEESAH GONNA DIE IF WE DON'T HELP THE PLANET!" And I believe in global warming and helping the planet and whatnot, just keep it out of my movies. Klaatu's mission this time was to come to Earth to save it from us. Ugh!
So he talks to the Secretary of Defense (Kathy Bates) who is unreceptive to his request to speak to the UN, and then basically he gives up and is like, "Well I guess you're fucked then, ok bye!" So (cool thing) he activates thousands of smaller sphere shaped ships like his own and they collect specimens of many creatures before taking off back into space. It's only when he sees Jennifer Connelly crying over her dying son that he realizes "there's another side to you", stops the apocalypse from happening around them, and fucking rolls out.
WHAT?!
Hey guy, an entire race's propensity for change isn't solely based on the fact that one woman has feelings about her dying kid. Just letting you know. He literally talked to one smart guy (John Cleese, in Hollywood's most wasted cameo ever), and Jennifer Connelly and was like "oh then it's cool, no worries." It blew my fucking mind. Basically, he saw people crying, saw they had feelings, and peaced out....which in no way reflects on our ability to save the Earth from ourselves. It's just a giant confusing mess, and I half expected there to be a big 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' bumper sticker on the back of his giant sphere ship as he flew away.
This movie has a moral, "Write coherent stories, or Will Fucking LeBlanc, Film Extraordinaire, will trash your film to his 10 friends who bother to read his reviews." That'll show 'em. I know some people are going to like this movie, and that makes me sad. Sad for how lazy people have gotten. Takes two seconds after you see a movie and THINK about what it was you saw. Don't just swallow it and forget about it, digest it and realize when something doesn't make a lick of sense. And for the love of God, stop spending money to see movies like this, it only makes them think they can keep getting away with it. Good effects, decent acting, laughable ending.
2.5 stars
Oh, and Hollywood, stop changing stuff just for the sake of sounding intelligent. The robot's name is Gort, you don't need to get all advanced and come up with Genetically Organized Robotic Tissue or whatever the fuck it was. Just have his fucking name be Gort. Christ!
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