As you will come to learn about me here on Truth On Cinema, I am a sucker for big-budget action science fiction films. Some of my most favorite movies (for the action-bid-budget-sci-fi quality, not necessarily story and character development) of all time include Independence Day, Cloverfield, Jurassic Park, Planet of the Apes, The Terminator simply for their action and “sci-fi-ness.” I admit that they aren’t really intelligent dramas nor are they movies that are going to satisfy everyone, but there’s just something about the “doomsday prophecy” storyline that gets me.

I have never seen the original that this movie is based upon so this won’t be a comparison review that currently litter the Internet, instead this will be a subjective review of this movie as it stands on its own. On its own, the short version of my review is

The Day The Earth Stood Still was an hour and twenty minutes of a confusing battle between extraterrestrials and the humans (which is always how it works out isn’t it) and way humans treat the world, with some mild social commentary on how we treat each other as humanity mixed in for measure, that began with about 10 minutes of visual candy as the “beings” enter our atmosphere and we scramble to figure out who they are and why they are here.

Keanu Reeves returns as an alien named “Klaatu” (and by return, I mean he returns as a character that is completely dead-pan, alien-like, and walks around very stiff and “wood-like”, pretty much like everyone of his roles) that is sent to save Earth…from the humans. Once he makes contact with the humans, we naturally act on the defense and take him in for questioning so we can discover why he is here…or better yet, we just want to make sure he’s not here to kill us, because we as American humans are always on the defense against any foreign presence in our midst. Commentary? I’ll let you decide. After he escapes, of course, he tracks down the only human contact to show him any compassion (which there is always one of in every one of these movies, the one person who cares for the alien being) at all, played by the great Jennifer Connelly. The rest of the film is composed of Connelly trying as hard as she can to convince Reeves that we are worth saving and that “yes, we can change, just you wait.”

Let me take a side note here and tell you how worthless of a character Jaden Smith was. Yes, that’s Will Smith’s son, the same kid in The Pursuit of Happyness that actually did pretty well (I believe it’s because of his father’s presence) in that film. He playes Connelly’s stepson who spends the entire film whining about how much of a non-parent Connelly is compared to his killed-in-action soldier Dad. He shouldn’t have been in this film, and you could have practically cast any young actor and he would have been 10 times better than Jaden. I don’t doubt that he’ll one day follow his father’s footsteps and go on to become a great actor, but for now, go to school and graduate and leave the acting to your Dad.

The effects do well to keep you visually stimulated and entertained, a feat these days that gets easier with every film with the availability of technology, but once that wears off, there’s not enough story or interest in the characters to make this film convincing. I get what they are trying to say, and while I agree that we as humans need to be better to each other, the alien presence of Klaatu and the imminent destruction of the human race in this film, do nothing to encourage any thoughts of how to change. The directors and writers go as far to create the tension and to get you to think about you treat other people, but once again, it’s one of those social commentary films that does just that: it makes comments on our current social climate but adds nothing to the conversation in ways we can change. In essence, this film, despite its impressive effects and imaginative premise, feels like an empty experience.

Content Warning: Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence. For a disaster film, it’s pretty clean, and the destruction scenes are more artistically interpretive than violent.

Related posts:

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon Review
2. My Summer In Review