Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Sigh!

Why has science fiction been so horrible this year? For every solid work like WALL-E or even CLOVERFIELD, we get crap like THE HAPPENING, the second X-FILES movie, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, and JUMPER. Do people who make these films understand that we don't need conventional love stories or cute kids or cuddly animals cluttering up and diluting our science fiction? Do the writers of such fare realize that the minute they include a scene of one person insisting on saving another person before they get around to the business of, oh, I don't know, saving the world ("I won't leave without [insert name of loved one]!") that I immediately get angry and disconnected from the film in every possible way? The remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL has about a million such scenes, or at least it feels like it does.

When I'm preparing to watching a franchise film (take HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3, for example), I tend to watch the movies that came before the most recent to reacquaint myself with the characters and situations. But with remakes, I stay away from the originals until after I've seen the newer version. Every new film deserves to be judged on its own merits and not on strictly how carefully version 2.0 follows the source material. But I know the original TDTESS pretty damn well; I have a poster of it in my bathroom and stare at it lovingly while I'm using the facilities. And other than a few names and the very basic starting-off point, the makers of the remake--director Scott (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE) Derrickson and writers David Scarpa and Edmund H. North--have gutted and rebuilt this legendary sci-fi plot. Let me rephrase that, they've taken a perfectly workable, easily updatable work, destroyed it with a wrecking ball and C4 explosives, and tried to put it back together with Scotch tape, thumb tacks, a stapler and bubble gum.

I repeat: Sigh!

And the real shame is that the set-up of TDTESS is pretty good, or at least mysterious and chilling enough to keep me curious. First off is a bizarre, totally unnecessary sequence involving a bearded Keanu Reeves on a snow-covered mountain in India in the 1920s. It's bad when the very first scene in the movie feels tacked on, but there you have it. But it's just weird enough to hook you. Jump ahead to today. We meet Helen Benson, a professor of some sort of biology that deals in rare life forms, I believe. She has a stepson named Jacob (Jaden Smith, son of Will, who was so good in THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS). Jacob's father (and Helen's husband) died fairly recently and the wounds are as fresh as Jacob's unease around Helen. The good professor is whisked away at the dinner hour by the U.S. government and told that a large foreign body was hurtling toward earth from space aimed directly for Manhattan. (For once, why can't one of these city killers crush Jersey?) But as it turns out a familiar glowing sphere-shaped object slows down and lands in Central Park, depositing a human-like creature in our midst, who is then promptly shot.

First off, I like the idea that in order to survive on earth the alien body "borrowed" our DNA for the purposes of essentially being born human. The human in question is Klaatu (Reeves), who does some of the best monotone acting of his career, and I'm being serious when I say that. He does have a gift for delivering emotionless lines, while still managing to convey the heart and soul behind them. He also works the menace muscle more than once here. And in case you were worried, Gort the robot is on hand as well, protecting Klaatu from harm (well, except for that shooting incident). Gort is about 10 times as large as the Gort from the original film and seems to have far more destructive force.

Essentially what the film boils down to is Klaatu admitting that he has come to save the earth from earthlings. If we live, the planet dies; if we die, the planet lives. But it is in within his power to stop the wholesale destruction of the human race, and with a little convincing and a few life lessons from Benson and her stepson, he might just do that. And with almost no effort, the films transforms from apocalyptic into a touchy-feely sentimental journey that derails any amount of suspense that is built up and makes us loathe every scene that Connelly or Smith are in. Jacob is an obnoxious, disobedient kid who would rather see the earth destroyed than run the risk of Helen fall in love with Klaatu and replace his dead dad. Jesus Christ!

And then there's the impressive-on-paper, largely underused on screen supporting cast that includes Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense (we never see the President or V.P.); Jon Hamm as the scientist who pulls Helen on the project initially; Robert Knepper (fresh from Transporter 3) as the lead military strategist; and John Cleese in one of the film's only truly interesting roles, which of course means that he's on screen a total of two minutes. He plays the role (one similar to what Michael Caine plays in CHILDREN OF MEN) straight, and the results are impressive and way too short.

But by the time the nanotechnology robots are set loose to destroy the planet, I'd pretty much given up on TDTESS. The film doesn't even have the guts to say what it is: an environmental warning. Although Klaatu doesn't explicitly say that the way in which humans are destroying the planet is through global warming, the implication is there. The original film was a cry for peace and sanity in the wake of the atomic bomb, and war could certainly be one of the ways an alien race might see us wiping ourselves out. But I'm pretty sure that's what I grasped between the lines. Don't be afraid to make that commitment.

The movie is cluttered with so-so special effects, messages of peace and love and the duality of man, and enough good intention to choke an elephant. There are bible verses and Bach, and neither one can save this weak-ass patchwork of ideas and performances that I guess passes for science fiction these days.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com