‘Earth’ good for fun, not suspense
The remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is dumb fun with a message.
Nothing wrong with that, but it’s worth noting that the dumb fun part is more effective by far.
Director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa obviously had to jettison the nuclear threat from the 1951 original, replacing it with a warning about … well, don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that it’s timely, if obvious.
The basic premise is the same: A visitor from another planet shows up; the military doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome wagon. Nothing says hello like a gunshot.
What is the reason for the visit? Can we see beyond our myopic world – um, universe – view to even receive the message, much less heed it?
Derrickson wisely keeps some of the more memorable aspects of the original intact.
Keanu Reeves is the perfect choice to play Klaatu, the emotionless alien who visits Earth with a series of seemingly inscrutable statements (he’s saving the big message for a meeting with world leaders that no one seems to want to make happen). And Gort, the giant robot-looking creature, is still around, menacing (and dangerous) as ever.
The film begins with a team of scientists corralled by the government to deal with an imminent threat – something is whizzing through space, heading for Manhattan. They’re led by Michael Grainer (Jon Hamm), but once an enormous globe has landed in the middle of Central Park and deposited Klaatu, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) is clearly the only one enough on the ball to recognize that we might want to listen to what the visitor has to say.
Certainly U.S. government representative Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) isn’t interested, at least not at first. It’s all a bit generic, the Big Bad Government Official too arrogant to think that she needs to pay anyone else any heed (a position effectively shot down with Klaatu’s snide retort, “Your planet?”).
Klaatu escapes and ends up on the lam with Benson and her adopted son, Jacob (Jaden Smith). He reveals his intentions to her: He is, indeed, a friend of the Earth. But that’s not necessarily the good news for the people living on the planet that it may sound like.
A meeting with Helen’s mentor, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese) – along with a little well-timed Bach and self-sacrifice – leads Klaatu to believe that we might not be the hopeless case he thought (what if Barnhardt had been a Barry Manilow fan?). But is it too late?
While Connelly and Smith are both fine, their scenes together are nothing special; it’s more fun to watch shortsighted government officials demand ridiculous experiments involving Gort.
And while Reeves is nobody’s Daniel Day-Lewis, he’s actually quite good at intoning lines of serious import; he gradually becomes more human, but never to the extent that he has to, you know, stretch.
On the other hand, he never says “Whoa,” either.
Audiences are more cynical than they were in 1951. Using what is in effect an expensive B-movie for social commentary doesn’t pack the same punch.
Better to just sit back and enjoy “The Day the Earth Stood Still” for what it is: a fair amount of fun.
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