They did it again.
Once more, Hollywood has remade a great film into a steaming pile of horse crap.
The latest victim is "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
We should have seen this coming. The first sign that something foul was afoot came when they cast Keanu "Wooden Face" Reeves in the starring role of Klaatu, and it only gets worse from there. For some reason, Jennifer Connelly spent most of the film using the same dead-eye look that her character in "Requiem for a Dream" was wearing by the end of the film. Amazingly, the only actor in the film that didn't totally embarrass himself - seriously, what was Kathy Bates doing in this movie? - was 10-year-old Jaden Smith. Much like his father, Will Smith, Jaden showed a gift for taking a bad role and somehow managing to look good in the process - essentially, the polar opposite of what Reeves does with his roles.
Of course, the real problem is letting Erwin Stoff, who produced "Chain Reaction," remake a classic sci-fi movie. Or rather, the real problem is letting the guy who made "Chain Reaction" continue to make movies. He's like a little kid that sticks a butter knife in an electric socket, and Hollywood is apparently determined to keep handing him butter knives - and yes, Reeves is the butter knife.
Even the special effects were uninspiring. The giant glowing sphere that lands in Central Park looks like someone took a child's marble, shined a light on one side, and then set it spinning: pretty enough to look at, but not really an image that shouts, "Look, a spaceship!" The only thing that stands out in the movie is Gort, the giant robot that protects Klaatu from harm, but badly, as Klaatu gets shot in the first five minutes.
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The plot is where this movie really falls down into the mud. Gone is the quit-killing-each-other theme from the original, and in its place is a vomit-inducing, heavy-handed plot on how humans are killing the planet, and thus we must be destroyed. Perhaps we are, but who asked the aliens to take an interest? The human race will take care of that on its own, when we commit collective suicide to avoid watching another movie working from a David Scarpa script. The entire film has the main characters wandering around in search of product placements.
This film should get an award for the most lazily incorporated product placement, ever. For some reason, whenever a computer needed to be used to explain things to people, they used one of Microsoft's Surface machines. Surface is a pretty cool idea - it's a tabletop computer on which one can combine interactions of the computer and physical objects resting on the screen - but why include it in a movie that ends with a massive electromagnetic pulse that disables every bit of technology on Earth, presumably including the Surface computer?
From start to finish, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is easily one of the worst movies of 2008. The casting looked like someone reached into a bag full of actor's names and picked whatever came out. Then they paid them until they actually showed up. No one looked at all interested in their roles - though with Reeves, it's hard to tell. The special effects managed to look both expensive and half-assed at the same time. The writing was terrible. The entire film serves as an example of how not to remake movies.
Plus there's one more thing that still makes no sense: What the hell was Kathy Bates doing in this movie?
'The Day the Earth Stood Still'
In theaters now
Grade: F
