Let's face it, people love to give advice to others, but don't always accept the reverse situation. After all, we're a can-do species, and there's nothing we can't solve, fix, or remedy if we put out minds, hearts and ingenuity into it. That said, we're also often desperate and/or gullible enough to seek the help of those proposing self-help remedies, but the important factor is that we decide we need such assistance rather than have them force-feed it to us.
The same holds true on a national level, where similar pride sometimes leads to rejecting advice and/or help, particularly when it comes from outsiders, and especially when some degree of threat is attached to that should we not comply. Take, for instance, back in 1951 when two foreigners with the funny names Klaatu and Gort arrived in Washington, D.C. with the dire warning about us proudly marching toward a nuclear nightmare.
We didn't ask for such advice and did what any red-blooded American would do -- we shot at them. After showing us the error of our ways, both in demonstration and with a verbal warning, they headed back home, their mission apparently complete. Yet, while we seemed to have finally heeded their warning -- at least to some degree -- about our growing stockpile of nukes, that foreign duo have returned once again. But it's not about our current economic crisis, humans' increasingly sedentary (and thus waistlines) ways, or even the unholy preponderance of "reality" TV.
No, instead it's all about the dangers of global warming and environmental pollution. This time, however, and after receiving a similarly militaristic reception from the Yanks, they've apparently decided enough is enough and are ready to deploy generous amounts of pesticide -- ironically enough, in the form of little metal insect-like creatures -- to rid the Earth of its main pests -- us!!!
The first time around, of course, was covered in the seminal 1951 sci-fi classic, "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Directed by Robert Wise and adapted from Harry Bates' story "Farewell to the Master" by screenwriter Edmund H. North, the film was a terrific, cold war cautionary tale with cool special effects (for the time) that still stands up fairly well today, at least when viewed as a more than half century old pic.
Never one to leave well enough alone, Hollywood has decided to remake the movie with the same title, but a change in focus from nukes to greenhouse gases and such. The result, while containing some equally cool (if technologically updated) special effects, is a pale imitator of its predecessor. Simply put, things don't make sense, we don't care about the characters or the outcome, and the writing -- that was so superb the first time around -- is so bad that such extraterrestrial aliens might just do a drive-by to perform a mercy killing of our apparently intellectually slipping species.
Beyond said effects (that ultimately become redundant and aren't really anything new that we haven't seen before), the one thing this pic has going for it is the casting of Keanu Reeves taking over the Klaatu character populated last time by Michael Rennie.
While I've often liked Reeves in certain roles, there's no denying he sometimes delivers emotionally cool and some might say vacant performances that make him seem, well, like an alien in human form, trying to fit in with the proper emotions, but coming off somewhat robotic and artificial. Since that's what he's playing here, it's a perfect match. Alas, director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa don't take enough advantage of that to make it pay off, and they've even jettisoned everyone's favorite line from the original, "Klaatu barada nikto!"
The bigger issue, however, is that so much of the film fails or simply mystifies in its logic or lack thereof. After arriving and getting the traditional bullet welcome, Klaatu does the old "take me to your leader" bit, except this time he wants to deliver his big speech to the U.N. Yet, and despite having supernatural powers that allow him to take out military attacks (much like his more robotic and far larger than last time companion who gets an acronym as his name rather than arriving with that already attached), he spends most of the film running around in the woods with an incredibly wooden, but still quite pretty Jennifer Connolly and her annoying brat of a stepson played by Jaden Smith.
I understand that there's the requisite human exposure and inevitable bonding (by the way, done so much better in the far superior "Terminator 2," especially considering the scene where the alien finally realizes humans might not be so bad after all), but if the "apply pesticide" decision has already been made, why bother arriving and informing everyone of their pending doom? Are these aliens sadists as well, like human kids moving a magnifying glass around an ant before incinerating him in a focused beam of sunlight?
That, and a number of other questionable character and filmmaker motives and decisions end up bedeviling the production, shifting the viewer's focus from worrying about the characters (not to mention the plight of the world) to scratching their heads (thus taking them out of the action) and making them think about far better alien invasion flicks such as Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" or, better yet, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
What's then left is a simple curiosity about what the special effects team is going to destroy, much has occurred in other contemporary disaster flicks ("The Day After Tomorrow," anyone?) where the money shots are landmarks getting wiped out in some spectacular way. Sadly, only those who hate the New York Giants will likely find any sort of satisfaction in what's offered (and to tell you the truth, the IMAX logo teaser that opens the film -- in, naturally, IMAX equipped theaters -- is far more impressive than most anything the filmmakers have dreamed up).
Slow to develop and unfold, filled with two when not one-dimensional characters (what was Kathy Bates thinking?), and running off an incredibly weak screenplay that should have siphoned off some of the special effects budget to make it better, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" redux isn't worth sitting still to watch (and that's our advice whether you want it or not). It rates as a boring 3.5 out of 10.
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