This 'Day' An Intergalactic Dud

Years from now, when people gather to speak about unnecessary remakes, someone is going to say: "Oh yeah, remember that one science fiction movie ... the one with the robot and the bugs ... it had Keanu Reeves."

"The Day The Earth Stood Still!" some will shout.

And those unfortunate enough to have seen it will laugh. Oh, how they'll laugh.

Perhaps this seems too harsh, but if there is a movie to be tough on, it's this one. It has a proven big star in Reeves, another fairly big star in Jennifer Connelly, and a special effects budget that would be the envy of every filmmaker this side of Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. There's just no excuse.

Reeves, who for years has been accused of wooden acting, is perfectly cast as an emotionless alien. But from its bumpy introduction of an "alien landing" to an abrupt ending, the movie looks as if it was slapped together to make its December release. Examples: A swarm of tiny alien bugs that can destroy Giants Stadium in 10 seconds cannot eat through a bridge in Central Park. An enigmatic opening scene in 1928 in the mountains of India is never referred to again or explained. Aliens from a highly evolved civilization who can travel light years through space do not understand the concept that sometimes beings can have "two sides."

The saving grace is that the movie basically sticks to the plot of the original movie from 1951, which might make someone want to check out the original. It's black-and-white, filled with cheesy effects and much, much better.

The film opens (after that India scene) with "astrobiologist" Helen Benson (Connelly), a professor at Princeton University, turning down a date so she can spend the evening with her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith). But the evening is shattered when government agents come to pick her up and take her to a facility where other scientists have been gathered (her being an astrobiologist never really comes into play, another of the movie's interesting, ah, quirks). There they learn a giant ship is heading towards Earth.

The ship lands in New York City's Central Park, and when the alien Klaatu (Reeves) is shot (by whom is never clear), he is immediately protected by Gort, a giant robot that emerges from the ship. Gort knocks out all the electronics in the area, but then apparently decides his companion is OK, because he shuts down and allows the Earthlings to take Klaatu to a hospital where the military, led by Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates), takes him prisoner. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but then ... well, by now you get the picture.

Klaatu eventually escapes, and with Helen and Jacob goes on a journey to find a fellow alien, one who has been living among us for 70 years. Apparently, a group of civilizations across the galaxy are trying to decide whether to eradicate the human race before we destroy the planet.

After a two-minute conversation at a McDonald's between Klaatu and his alien buddy, they decide that, yeah, it's probably best to obliterate us.

From there, the movie moves from inanity to inanity, including a scene that completely wastes the talents of John Cleese as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Probably even fan geeks will be disappointed by Gort, who is all computer-generated imagery and huge, but eventually transforms into a swarm of metallic bugs that eat everything in their path. For alien, metallic bugs, they sure look a lot like Earth's palmetto bugs.

Ultimately there's a message here about love and being kind to the environment, but it's poorly delivered. It's a mercy when the movie abruptly ends.

MOVIE REVIEW

The Day The Earth Stood Still *

MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13, for some sci-fi disaster images and violence

STARS: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, John Cleese

DIRECTOR: Scott Derrickson

LOCATION: See movie times, Page 8, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: An alien being struggles to decide whether to allow his gigantic robot to eradicate human life on Earth

RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes

ON THE WEB: www.thedaytheearthstoodstillmovie.com