Movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still

It's a remake (of sorts). The trailers look great, the visuals look good but it's going to be compared to one of the great SciFi films of the 50s.

I remember being blown away by the original film when I first saw it, many years ago. Unlike a lot of SciFi, it had lots of real life in it, but mingled with the real flying saucer, aliens stuff. The ship was great and Gort was fantastic. So when I heard about this remake, at first I thought it was a _really_ bad idea. When I started to see clips and trailers, I thought I might have been wrong.

This film has much going for it. It looks wonderful, with some very nice SFX and some wonderful use of the big cinema screen (which does make it worth watching at the movies). The story is shrouded in mystery and we slowly find out where it's taking us, the initial meeting has the same tinge of tragedy that it did in the original film and the benevolent / malevolent pendulum is used to some good effect.

There are however problems with the film, the two main ones being the characters and the plot - both kinda important. The story is just too simple, there is no depth, there is no twist, there is just nothing. You see some lovely effects, they parade some "cutting edge" technology, rather clumsily, in front of you, the players move around from scene to scene, but it's all so shallow as to be meaningless. In the first act, I felt it was very well paced, it seemed to be very slowly unfolding the story, but then it keeps on at a snail's pace only accelerating right at the end of the film, and by then it's just too late.

The characters not only lack a third dimension, but also a second dimension too. Reeves is a plank. It works for a while, but then he's supposed to be understanding humanity and you get lots of lingering closeups - but he's still just a plank. The other characters are even less memorable. The inclusion of the de-facto annoying kid is actually welcome as it's a character the whole audience can dislike together, otherwise you can't feel anything towards any of the characters at all.

The only thing that saves it from being a total disaster is Gort - who is just very cool, and very well updated from the original, I feel. That and the ship, which is very mysterious and eerie.

I liked what they were trying to do with this film, but it was just executed so poorly that it's another remake to quietly forget about, whilst continuing to reminisce about the far superior original offering.

4/10