The Day the Earth Stood Still
or
The movie without character development
A remake (2008)
Let me start out by saying I have never seen the original movie that this sub-par movie is a remake of, but judging from the above writeups the original was good. The new movie is not good. It’s not really bad either in that it is entertaining because of massive special effects, but there is no meat to the plot or the premise or... anywhere really.
The premise is “violence is bad and humans are bad for being violent and generally killing the environment”. This is dealt with in the movie, but it feels like an excuse to use up a special effect budget.
So, the “humans are killing the world” is played heavy-handily and as clumsy as you please, without much effort otherwise.
But let’s get to my major complaint and then I’ll shut up about this nonsense movie.
There’s no character development. Keanu Reeves plays the alien Klaatu, a name almost as weird as his own. Keanu is a good actor for this role because Klaatu is basically a wooden automaton and if Keanu can play any role really well it is that of a wooden automaton.
Then there’s a scientist-lady who is a professor of xeno-micro-biology or something else equally absurd who the US government apparently has on speed dial in case aliens land. Don’t worry about her name because if you see the movie, you won’t remember it. She is the protagonist, but don’t worry about relating to her because she is just as flat as every other character in the film.
She has a step-son she takes care of. The back story makes a feeble attempt to explain why she is taking care of him by stating that his father died. This also explains why the kid is black and the woman is white-white-white. The kid doesn’t respect his step-mother and dislikes aliens, and that’s all there is to him.
There is a guy working for the government who would be what is passed off as a romantic interest in a better movie. He is displayed briefly in the beginning, and then briefly in the end… when he is killed off. Not surprisingly, none of the other characters seem to care.
The only character who has any development at all is the US Secretary of State who is the only character who has a convincing turn around in the entire movie.
There’s a giant robot too, but we’ll ignore that, because the movie mostly does too.
Highly mediocre. A pointless remake, probably inferior in every way to the original. If you want to go to a flick this week, go to Transporter 3 because I guarantee you’ll have a better time.