alien, and Jennifer Connelly, an actress so preternaturally humourless and glowering that she seems to have had a stick lodged in her posterior since 1998. This is not a Hollywood pairing for the ages. Reeves requires a co-star with pluck and quirk – someone who can make the actor’s woodenness seem like it’s part of the joke, like Sandra Bullock in Speed or Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. Alas, Connelly doesn’t look like she’s heard a joke in years; and watching these two performers try to generate sparks or emotion – or whatever the heck they’re supposed to be generating here – quickly turns into chore. “The Day the Earth Stood Inert” is more like it. Reeves plays Klaatu, an alien who arrives in Central Park, in the company of an immense robot and a giant floating orb, and then immediately asks to address the United Nations. But the tough-as-nails secretary of defence (Kathy Bates, looking like the unfortunate love child of Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright) insists that Klattu be sedated and interrogated. Enter Dr. Helen Benson (Connelly), a Princeton University scientist who sees a glimmer of decency in Klaatu’s eyes and helps him escape from the United States government’s clutches. Released in 1951, the Robert Wise-directed original is a seminal text in any study of post-World War II/Cold War-era cinema: Klaatu tells the terrified citizenry that unless they begin to behave civilly to one another, he and his robot pal Gort will wipe out humanity in order to salvage planet Earth. This remake, written by David Scarpa, updates the central premise for a more ecologically sensitive era, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same: Klaatu and Gort, having observed the Earth for decades, believe that the planet is much too precious a commodity to be left to the devices of the bunch of people who inhabit it. The end-of-the-world genre requires both imagination (remember New York City freezing solid in The Day After Tomorrow?) and ruthlessness (remember the quivering zombies trying to gob-
ble up Will Smith whole in I Am Legend?). Directed by Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), The Day the Earth Stood Still has neither. For most of its running time, the movie piles belaboured exposition atop dopey contrivances atop corny sentimentality (in this version, Dr. Helen has a churlish stepchild, played by Jaden Smith, whose father was killed in the Iraq War). By the time John Cleese turns up, as a Nobel prize winner for his “biological altruism,” it’s a minor miracle that anyone in the cast is able to keep a straight face. (Indeed, the scene in which Cleese watches in awe as Reeves writes out an impossibly convoluted math equation on a chalkboard qualifies as an instant camp classic.) The mayhem, when it finally arrives, is too little and way too cheesy. After having a massive drill bit unsuccessfully applied to his skull, Gort decides to unleash a swarm of metallic insects, which seems to have the power to eat through all matter. Fun the first few times – especially when those critters chomp their way through Giant Stadium – but a tad tedious after the sixth or seventh such scene. More often, the CGI looks cheap and cartoonish – particularly the sections involving Gort, who is rendered as a cross between an overgrown Iron Man doll and an Oscar statuette. With its easily digestible lessons about the importance of treating your surroundings with care, and believing that even the most hard-hearted souls are capable of change, The Day the Earth Stood Still will probably resonate best with the pre-teens in the crowd, who might not necessarily care about the sluggish direction or the considerable gaps in logic (if Klaatu and Gort can land in Central Park, and place floating orbs all across the planet, can’t they just beam themselves directly into the United Nations)? Everyone else would be much better off staying home and revisiting Armageddon or Deep Impact, which – compared to this movie – are models of intelligence, wit and complexity. Reviewed by Christopher Kelly INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM January 2009 95