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The Day the Earth Stood Still
MyTriState.us Score: 2.5 out of 5
It's not just a title, folks: the actors, your brain and the very story do often stand still in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Often, we do our best not to spoil the movie, but, since we don't think this movie is worth your time on any level, we're going to run through it blow for blow, so if you really want to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, stop reading now.
The movie is poorly written, full of unnecessary exposition and nonsense. The film opens with what we later learn is an alien probe taking a sample of human DNA so they can later send down one of their own in a human body. This takes way to long and its totally unecessary; we don't need an explanation why the alien looks like Keanu Reeves. Keanu Reeves, who we understand is thought to be a farely wooden actor, does what we think was probably all anyone could do with the character Klaatu in these circumstances. Jennifer Connelly, however, is doing something we've never seen before. Its nothing outstanding, but her performance is, in our mind, unrecognizable from any other performance we've ever seen her give, but a bit like performances we've seen other actors give in similar roles. She does a nice job, but the role and script are limiting. The usually electrifying Kathy Bates is tamed in her role as secretary of defense, again limited by the script and her character. Jaden Smith portrays Connelly's stepson, and he seems to have the makings of a fine actor, but he was cursed with one of the most painful roles in history that he does his best with. His character and dialogue made you want to break something, which meant Smith was doing something right, but we felt that the screenplay writers did something wrong. Back to the plot: as the film gets moving after a sluggish start, Connelly is summoned, along with many other scientists who the screenplay writers more or less forget about shortly after, to try to come up with an answer to an object heading on a collision corse with earth that will destroy all life on the planet. As the object nears, missle defense systems go down and they unable to intercept via missle, but at the last moment, the object, another glowing sphere, lands in central park. For some reason, people are wandering around Central Park at night, and none of them are being killed or rapped - fancy that! In any case, Reeves' character emerges from the sphere and just when Connelly is about to make contact, Reeves is shot. In answer to this violence, a fifty foot (or so) robot jumps out of the sphere and is ready for business - the surrounding army and police personel all lose power to their lights and vehicles and a strage noise causes everyone pain and they all fall to the ground. Reeves, whose character is wearing some sort of strange space suit that nearly matches his ship, holds up his hand and speaks to the robot, and it deactivates and stands stock still in front of the ship. They take Reeves to surgery where they find that his space suit is also enabling him to grow a human body, which takes about 6 hours. Reeves soon recovers and explains that he is an alien and he's here as a friend to the earth and that the planet human's inhabit is not theirs. Eventually, Reeves escapes with Connelly's help, and some of his own. Soon, Reeves his hooked up with Connelly and Smith, and they make their way to another smaller sphere, which Reeves activates. It serves as a Noah's Ark of sorts and collects animal samples from all over the planet. Reeves also makes use of this tube of magic goo that heals all wounds multple times without explanation during these scenes. Once the spheres have collected all of their samples, the begin to leave earth. Reeves explains that there are only so many planets in the cosmos that can support complex life the way earth can, and they can't allow humans to continue to destory the planet. Connely and others ask Reeves to reconsider, and he reluctantly agrees to try to stop the process, but he says if he can, it will be at great cost. Meanwhile, the giant robot has slimed down from his massiveness to a nano insect sort of life form and begins flying around in a swarm. Whatever they touch, they destroy, including people - they get these signature "I have the nano insect disease" nose bleeds. They finally make it back to the Central Park sphere, where Connelly and Smith become infected. Reeves saves them and then deactives the process, and all the bugs seem to die. There are random shots of technology all over earth shutting down and then the movie ends without so much as another word. We assume technology will no longer work, and this was the great cost Reeves refered to, but we can't really be sure. Anyway, this was a long winded way of saying this movie blows, even for a special effects movie starring Keanu Reeves - don't bother seeing it.