You wouldn't have known from the trailers that Scott Derrickson's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a remake of one of the most influential science fiction films of all time. The thinking over at 20th Century Fox seems to have been just to market Derrickson's movie as a typical big, loud disaster film, the kind of thing you usually see in summer. It could be that Keanu Reeves's lead casting, as the blithe alien emissary Klaatu, had something to do with this approach, since Reeves is still best remembered for "The Matrix," the crackerjack 1999 blockbuster that rewrote the rules for "big and loud."
There's often a bad pattern around remakes where they blow you away during the trailers and leave you empty and heartbroken once they make it to theaters. Sadly, this one was no different. I tried not to give my heart away, but in the end I was still disappointed.
The plot, which drifts a bit from Robert Wise's original 1951 film (itself an adaptation of, and something of a departure from, Harry Bates's 1940 short story "Farewell to the Master") concerns an alien mothership that comes to Earth and discharges Klaatu, a spokesman of sorts. Klaatu gets shot immediately, showing us the first of many "nonplussed" faces, and delivers a warning shortly thereafter that humans need to change their self-destructive ways or Klaatu's own people will hurry up and finish the job for us. Eventually Klaatu is made to appreciate the ties of love and grace that exist between people, but he still gets persecuted and ends up sacrificing himself for the good of the world. It totally doesn't have anything to do with Jesus at all.
Wise's movie is a classic of modern science fiction. Its hulking robot Gort remains an indelible contribution to the genre, as does the nonsense safeword phrase "Klaatu barada nikto," whose Wikipedia page is longer than that of the original film. Derrickson's remake shifts some elements around, moving the ship's landing site from Washington, DC to Central Park, but his reverence for the main plot signposts is very much in evidence. Gort's first appearance, when he steps out of the ship and disables everyone’s weapons, is more than a little chilling.
Klaatu, chased by the American military and on a mission to save Earth from the Earthlings, bounces periodically off another subplot involving Jennifer Connelly as Helen Benson, a Princeton professor, and Jaden "My Dad Is Will" Smith as Jacob, her superbrat stepson, who was probably the single biggest impediment to my enjoyment of the movie. You don't expect a 10-year-old to be Olivier, but Smith chews scenery like no one's business. There's nothing wrong with Connelly as an actor (though her character here is a bit of a rehash of her turn in "Hulk"), but the scenes with her and Smith should not have been allowed to take up as much of the movie as they did.
Following a structure familiar to anyone who's seen a movie with spaceships and laser guns in it, Derrickson front-loads "The Day" with some impressive action setpieces and then films most of the second act in small locations that don't look expensive, though they undoubtedly were. The inevitable moment when Klaatu’s realizes the intrinsic worth of humanity is hackneyed almost by design, but something could have been done to make it interesting; instead, it's scripted and shot with no real flair, and comes across as something the screenwriters almost forgot to include. and a huge throwaway. Not even an awesome cameo by John Cleese could offset the basic dopiness of the denouement.
Where credit is due: the effects look great, and Reeves's casting is a small masterstroke, since for all intents and purposes the dude is already an alien, furrowing his brow as he tries to understand our ways. The Keanu Reeves delivery, which doesn't vary much from film to film, clicks perfectly into place here. I also enjoyed the twist of having small, dormant spacecraft buried across the planet, designed to rise up as Noah's Ark-type vehicles and ferry away all the innocent species in the event of the Earth's destruction.
Still, a few computer programs and Reeves's stilted line readings aren't enough to throw down money for. If I were you I'd just wait for this movie to appear on cable, and play it for background noise. (The Gort scenes work especially well for this.) The didactic, hamfisted dialogue certainly doesn't merit your full attention. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" could have been a very smart film, but it didn't go that route. When it's 2008 and you're ripping off "Escape from L.A.," it's time to reassess your vision.
