Hollywood destroys another classic movie...

When will Hollywood get the message! It doesn't seem like anytime soon. When I heard that there was a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still coming I had my suspicisions. Then I saw the previews with Keanu Reeves telling Jennifer Connolly that Earth was not our planet I knew what was coming.

And I was right...
Review: 'Earth Stood Still,' movie falls apart - CNN.com

By Tom Charity

(CNN) -- Call it the second coming.

Klaatu the spaceman first visited these parts in Robert Wise's 1951 Cold War classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," when he threatened to blow us all up unless we stopped threatening to do the job for him.

Klaatu wasn't exactly greeted with open arms back then -- he was shot and hounded for his troubles -- and if the earth has moved on over the past half century, you wouldn't know it from the trigger-happy welcoming committee that surrounds his luminous snowball of a space craft in New York's Central Park.

Where sci-fi films in the 1950s used to see red(s), today they go green. Directed by Scott Derrickson ("The Exorcism of Emily Rose") and scripted by David Scarpa ("The Last Castle"), "The Day the Earth Stood Still" 2.0 ditches the Cold War theme. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) means to save the planet, but war isn't the problem. Mankind is the problem.

The filmmakers have come up with an effective Spielbergian prologue, cutting from the Himalayas in 1928 to contemporary biology professor Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), whisked from her home by uniformed men in response to an undisclosed national emergency. It's strange to think that in the final hour the government will turn to molecular biologists for guidance, though true to form (as in the 1951 original) the scientists are quickly overruled by the politicians.

But once Keanu-Klaatu emerges from his blubbery placenta spacesuit, the movie shifts into familiar fugitive thriller terrain and the tension slowly drains out of it. Dr. Benson helps him escape to New Jersey where he can meet with an alien undercover agent in McDonald's, and she can introduce him to a true world leader, a Nobel laureate played by John Cleese.

If you're going to cast a top star as an alien being, Reeves seems a solid choice. He's always been able to process human emotion with a Spock-like detachment.

"This body is going to take some getting used to," Klaatu cautions shakily in his first scene, but in fact he gets the walking-talking thing down pat in no time.

He's a messianic figure -- he fires lasers out of his wrists, like a reverse-stigmata and he has the power to resurrect the dead (though unlike Jesus, Klaatu killed the guy in the first place). The climax even includes a plague of robotic locusts.

But the movie never comes up with a convincing explanation for why his superpowers don't extend to, say, picking up a telephone. Apparently the aliens have been monitoring us for at least 70 years, but Klaatu is taken aback to discover our emotional side. Mostly he learns this from Jaden Smith, who plays Dr. Benson's stepson Jacob. It's not necessarily a good emotional side: Jacob is a whiny, obstinate and disobedient little boy that would lead most extraterrestrials -- and not a few of the rest of us -- to reach for the destruct button.

Still, it's surely remiss to wipe out the species before lending an ear to Johann Sebastian Bach.

The original movie is beginning to show its age, but at least it holds up as a story. That's more than you can say for a preachy, draggy blockbuster that espouses a radical message of Luddite technophobia at the same time as it conspicuously plugs Honda and LG Electronics, and dresses up its half-baked thinking in blinding (but not that brilliant) CGI wizardry.

Johnny Carson used to joke that his 1964 bomb "Looking for Love" was so bad it was transferred to flammable nitrate film stock. If they're so determined to be green, perhaps the producers of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" would consider something biodegradable.


And even less kind review, and probably more honest, is here.

Comments

  1. TDTESS
    (The Day The Earth Stood Stymied)

    review 1
    Well, I hardly know where to begin. Was it the writing?
    The direction? The Acting or the lack there of. Thank God for Kathy Bates. Speaking of ... was it the fact that she was far outshining the alleged star that some part of the 20th Century machine had a secret meeting with wardrobe and said: “make sure You fit her with a really bad wig”. I’m just astounded by the depth of badness this film has achieved. And not like it would be fun to watch again bad, i.e. ‘Plan 9 from outer space’, but bad as in when it’s released to TV, I would rather watch an infomercial.

    review 2
    I don’t want to thwart the studios attempts to make some money off this to help pay for the ridiculous special effects. By all means go and see for Yourself. The best bit of acting from Keanuu came when he was trying to drink water. I know it must have taken allot out of him. As a suggestion for his next role he should consider
    remaking the TV series Kung Fu. Forgive them Robert Wise, they know not what the heck they’re doing and have not learned from the master of his craft.

    review 3
    I should have known it was going to be bad from the get when within 10 minutes of starting my sons and I turned it into a live science fiction theatre 3000. While filing out of the theatre We were discussing the highlights and favorite scenes. We all agreed that when Keanuu got the tuna sandwich and then when into the bathroom and collapsed, someone called out, ‘bad tuna’. That was pretty funny. So maybe I take it back. Maybe this movie does deserve a second viewing. Only this time, asap, We’ll give it the full SciFi 3000 treatment it deserves.

    review 4
    As a consolation for fans of the original movie I can tell You this was NOT a remake. This was an entirely different movie. They just slapped a few scenes in there that were similar. Lifted a few character names but by no means the character. They certainly left the old message intact by developing a script that had more in common with Al Gore’s ‘an Inconvenient truth’ and outright stole the title, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

    Come to think of it, I can’t help but wonder if they had to go in and re-shoot the last scene because someone must have pointed out that at no point during the movie did anything actually stand still.

    Well at least they justified steeling the title but there still refuses to be any explicable reason why everything came to a stop other than the movie was over and everybody turned to eachother and said: “is that it?” Like one of those movies You keep watching, hoping it will offer one good reason to Your wallet yet invariably feeling You fell victim to a clever bamboozle.

    I would think that the makers of the original should sue but they’re the same people. All I can tell You is, You keep going to the same place for pizza cause they make the best. Then one day the pizza maker leaves and You know the difference, and it ain’t no good, not much unlike this sorry excuse for a movie.

    review 5
    Within a millisecond of the first credit showing my son spoke out loud: “that was the worst movie I’ve ever sat through”. We also went to see Dee Snyder’s ‘StrangeLand’. Not that that was good, but it was better. The entire way home I kept trying to put into words where the production went awry. He was obviously in shock. He kept interrupting my train of thought with “that was the worst movie I’ve ever sat through” as though he were permanently scarred. Upon arrival home he said: “I wanna watch the old one right away so I can get this one out of my head”.

    review 6
    My heart was so into it. Like any good love affair gone by the way, perhaps my expectations were too high. The entire ordeal of this screenplay can easily be summed up in the first miss strokes of the brush. As the audience braces for certain destruction from a deep space impact there is just as suddenly, no money shot, no pay off. Baited and Waiting for the big impact and then it never came. In the midst of making love my lover passed out. Quite the disappointment.

    I won’t be calling again any time soon.

    note: Stymied = a situation or problem presenting such difficulties as to discourage or defeat any attempt to deal with or resolve it.

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