The Day the Earth Stood Still

I’ve seen worse.  Not what you want to hear from a review.  I was expecting, though, going into this movie, to see the worst thing put on screen since whatever the last Rob Schneider movie was.  It was definitely bad, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected it to be.  And those of you who have seen Octopus 2: River of Fear know what I was anticipating.  Not good.  Not good at all.

Keannu Reeves seems to ruin just about everything he can get his hands on.  He’s a horrible actor, and everyone knows it.  He probably even knows it.  He’s just awful in every way.  He’s monotone, one-dimensional at best, never reacts to anything, and plays the exact same character no matter what the movie is or the circumstances might suggest.  I mean, have you even seen The Lake House?  Jennifer Connelly, on the other hand, isn’t always bad.  In fact, she is good a lot of the time.  She has multiple levels, understands that character comes out of the circumstances, and is all-around about ten times the actor Reeves is.  I mean, have you seen A Beautiful Mind?

This movie has the affect that Keannu Reeves has on screen.  Boring.  It starts off actually pretty exciting, and then it loses you slowly but steadily as the film moves on.  It progresses toward (who guessed it?) the end of the world as we know it.  Despite the unoriginal nature of the plot, it could still have something to offer, something to say, or at least to entertain; I’ll save you the agony: it just doesn’t.  Yes, there are a few moments of excitement which are salvific in the sense that they saved me from throwing things at the screen, but not in the sense that the movie is much better for them.  And the ending is just atrocious.  I won’t give it away, though I feel I should just to save you the time and money.  But I won’t.  I will just suffice it to say that it is completely and totally predictable in almost every way.  Almost every way.  It’s also utterly implausible and unjustified.  I can’t say any more without a spoiler alert, so I’ll just stop there.

This will be a short review, folks, because I can’t think of anything positive to write.  I could keep harping on how the original must be better, the script is mediocre, the metaphors are obvious, etc., ad nauseum.  But I won’t.  I could force out a few more paragraphs on the nature of the ending, its horrid justification, and the void that this movie left where something exciting could have happened.  But I won’t.  Instead, I’ll just advise you to stare at the original poster from the 1951 original film.  It’s bound to be more stimulating than this movie.

Rating: 1/4 Stars

The original film (1951)