Showing at a local home cinema VIII

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008). For this film, I’ll save us the suspense and get right to it: this a one-star, and it isn’t because of Keanu Reeve’s typically wooden acting or Jaden Smith has none of his papa Will Smith’s acting chops. It’s just an abysmally and utterly stupid movie.

What happens if a huge alien sphere speeds across the cosmos heading to earth before landing in Central Park? I’ll tell what I won’t do for sure. If I was a famous scientist handpicked by the government to save us all, I sure won’t be standing almost underneath the damn alien ship in the Park waiting for it to land on my head.

And I definitely won’t run ahead of the military forces to give the alien being that steps out a welcome hug. I would be cowering behind their biggest most heavily armored tank. Better still, I’d dig a hole and hide inside it!

And if history has always shown that “the more advanced civilization exterminates the lesser one” – as the Defense Secretary quips – the last thing I’d do is to antagonize it, like dunno, shooting its envoy just when he steps out!

And if I was the unlucky guy who has to interrogate the alien and ask him if he’s here as a space tourist or to rip us to shreds – especially seeing that he has a 10 storey scarily-high metallic-skinned bodyguard who shoots death rays out of his eyeballs – I sure won’t do it alone with him in a room. I would have had hundreds of elite forces all pointing their guns at him while I grill him.

If that turd of the script wasn’t bad enough, I could get into the acting. Jennifer Connelly is lovely to look at with those sad dopey eyes. But if I had a step-son like Smith who just can’t keep his mouth shut, I would have kicked him right into the path of the rampaging GORT for it to squish like a bug. Put next to the annoying Jake Lloyd‘s Anakin Skywalker, Lloyd is a saint. And ’nuff said about Keanu Reeves’ monotone acting.

And when the world’s facing Armageddon, the military person controlling the unmanned aerial vehicles carrying sidewinders acts like it’s some video game that he can insert another quarter into to start a new game anytime.

So why the one and not zero stars? Well the movie will make you laugh, albeit unintentionally. The scene where Keanu Reeves and James Hong converse in Mandarin is alone worth a star. Hong emerges from the scene respectably well. As for Reeves: well, you’ll either cringe, or laugh – like I did.