Movies: The Day the Earth Stood Still | Keanu Reeves

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 11 December 2008

Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves in The Day The Earth Stood Still

Alien Keanu puts a new spin on end of the world

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Certificate 12a

PLAGUES of locust-like aliens devouring everything in their path, arks taking animals two by two from Earth to outer space while humans are wiped out – this remake of a 1951 sci-fi flick is full of apocalyptic biblical action.
The Day The Earth Stood Still tells the story of aliens who have come to wipe humans out in order to save the planet from our stupidity.
While back in 1951 the threat of nuclear war spurred the film-makers, this time it’s global warming. It’s littered with 21st-century Al Gore buzz words such as “tipping point”.
The story goes like this: aliens land on Earth and sickly sweet boffin Jennifer Connelly is brought in by the military to work out what they want.
As the film progresses, we learn that she was the ideal choice to deal with the aliens, and not because of her knowledge of astro-physics. She is the guardian of a little boy whose mother died when he was a baby, and whose father, her husband, was killed while working as an engineer for the US Army in Iraq.
Such sacrifice! Such overflowing human kindness! Such utterly cringing characterisation!
Keanu Reeves plays Kaatu, the world-destroying alien, and is lumbered with a balsa wood plot and awful lines. Add in the chortle factor of John Cleese as a Nobel prize-winning scientist (his job is to make the alien see reason while scribbling algebra on a chalk board) and the levels of preposterousness are intergalactic.
Although effects should not be a saving grace for any movie, there is some great artwork here: a truck being demolished by the locusts and a football stadium under attack stand out.
This is a 2008 pastiche of a 1950s
B-movie, and for that reason the sheer nonsense works. As the name suggests, it is true to the original and if you bear this in mind throughout, it’s not such a bad film after all.

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