There’s much to be said about sci-fi films of the ’50s and ’60s. Yes, the giant lizards were hammy and unterrifying but the post war period represented a time when people grappled with the ramifications of victory/loss; living with new fears – mutually assured destruction, creeping communism, duck-and-cover, Cold War. The terror of the tank was replaced with a psychological horror far more insidious. It was the stuff of metaphor heaven and it fed scriptwriters for generations to come. Around 57 years after first release The Day the Earth Stood Still has been given a coat of paint, spruced up for the CGI generation and launched on an unsuspecting and indifferent public. Keanu Reeves plays the alien, earnestly mugging his way through this shocker with all the charm and charisma of a used battery. His crib notes probably said “stoic” but all I saw was “imminent constipation”. He’s not exactly helped by Jayden Smith playing the obligatory opinionated sprog. It’d be cruel to get stuck into a kid, but he’s thoroughly disagreeable and will struggle to reach the low heights of his dad, Will, on this evidence. Jennifer Connelly, John Cleese and a giant orb emit low range energies that struggle to maintain attention. The plot is simple – alien comes to earth to collect a show bag full of animals that are innocents in the destructive nature of man, alien advises humanity it is doomed and are bad, alien begins to blow up world – yet they still manage to stuff it up. In this post-millennial update you can practically hear global warming and allegory in the background but maybe the producers got scared and played it safe. So, in its place is a directionless mess – no plot thrust, nil character development, cod dialogue and a giant robot that would be more suitable as an oversized garden gnome.
