The Day the Earth Stood Still

Ok, to preface this entry I have to say I have not seen the original, which may or may not be a better movie.

One of my guilty pleasures is Keanu Reeves films, as bad as most of them are, so I popped the DVD into my player practically the moment I got my hands on it. Keanu is one of the most wooden actors I've ever seen, yet he makes up for it with his decisions in roles. How does this work? I don't really know, but the fact that he chooses terrible movies to associate himself with alone makes him awesome in my book.

The plot's super simple, so you really don't need a paragraph to explain...an alien orb lands on Earth in the middle of Central Park and the government sends scientists and a tenth of their forces to investigate. As the alien emerges and is on the brink of shaking hands with Jennifer Connely's character (a scientist. Like she could be a soldier...) he gets shot by a sniper three thousand yards away on a sky scrapers. I'm not sure which gun could reach with that level of accuracy, but I won't say there isn't one...movie logic states it's possible ninety-nine percent of the time, anyway. Then a behemoth of an alien robot struts out of the orb and disables every electronic thing in the park and pretty much gives the finger to humanity.

Skip forward a bit and we see that alien buddy has morphed into a human to better convey what the balls is about to happen. If you couldn't guess, they're here to save Earth by eliminating the plague that is humanity. Connely helps Klaatu (Keanu) to escape military captivity without the knowledge of his plans, and we get Children of Men's story mixed with some stereotypical Black-White cop duo cliche. I'm not trashing multi-racial teams, but every movie that features that pairing seems to do the "learn about each other's problems/life" crap while the bigger picture is tapping its toes to get a move on.

The big problem I had with this movie is it feels way too long for it's hour-and-forty minute mark. I mean, I've seen movies twenty minutes shorter that had characters you grew to like and wished you could see more of. Here you have six people you barely cared about, and they're constantly on the screen. Connely's character was boring, her stepson (Jaden Smith) was angsty and made decisions that a multiple personality disorder individual would acknowledge jarr, and the others were so unimportant that they could have been one character. For his ten or fifteen minutes on screen, John Cleese was excellent, and so was James Hong. In fact, Hong was the most believable character in the lot of them, and he was one of the Klaatu aliens!

Despite all of the trashing of it, this movie had some very nice special effects. Maybe they weren't exactly subtle or non-C.G.-looking, but they were cool to watch and one was actually kind of creepy. There is also one scene in the film that is supposed to add depth to the stepson character and in any other movie it would have been wonderful, yet it felt disjointed; however, it was still a touching moment that was sad in a way that anyone can sympathize.

I wish they had given this cast better material, because with Kathy Bates, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connely, and Jaden Smith you really should do better! It's hardly worth renting, and definitely not worth buying, though I do suggest you grab it if you have Netflix or if it pops up on a movie channel.