The Day the Earth Stood Still is built around a horribly mistaken premise: that a civilization intelligent enough to traverse the galaxy would be stupid enough to choose Central Park, NY as the place to make first contact with the human race. I’m not a super-intelligent being from another world, but ominously approaching a country as paranoid and trigger-happy as America seems to be asking for trouble.
This is essentially a modern updating of the 1951 version. Instead of the aliens worrying about human nuclear power running amok, the aliens are concerned for the safety of the planet and deem it necessary to exterminate humanity. Cue irrational humans doing their best to catch, torture and experiment on the alien. Watch alien sigh at their futile attempts to shoot, bomb, drill into them at every possible chance. The silver lining of this otherwise average movie is the five minute interlude between the alien and John Cleese, where the characters speak intelligently and thoughtfully. Pay attention though, for just as it gets going it stops again and we go back to insolence, stubbornness and complete and outright irrationality.
And now that we come to it, that makes it three science fiction movies that a Smith has spoiled with annoying characters. Will Smith in I, Robot took the great thing about Asimov’s robot stories and threw it in the garbage pile in favor of the same crappy robots-taking-over-the-world story. This was on top of his involvement in the overwhelmingly lame Independence Day. Now, he has spawned a son who had altogether too much screen time in this movie than his character would have normally received had he not been Will Smith’s son. Watching the kid repeatedly sigh and make a sad face while talking about his dead father is at the top of my list of things I never hope to watch again. Right up there with Kathy Bates. Sorry, but I’m never going to get over that hot tub scene in About Schmidt.
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