The Day The Earth Stood Still, 3/5

Rated PG-13. Click here to view the trailer.

For your information, aliens prefer to zip around town in reliable, fuel-efficient Honda Accords, discuss the end of the human race over a nice, hot Mickey D’s McCafe Latte, the US Government uses computers made by LG (they make computers now?) running Windows Vista and we had better start recycling and saving the whales, pronto.

Those are just some of the lessons we learn from The Day the Earth Stood Still, which, despite what you may have read on the blogs, is not a documentary on freeze tag. It also teaches us that Keanu Reeves might very well be an actual alien.

Dr. Pretty Brunette (I forget her real name, but she is played - rather blandly - by Jennifer Connelly) is an expert in astro-biology (huh?). When a huge alien sphere shows up in Central Park, who better to poke and prod mankind’s first-ever contact with extra-terrestrial life than someone who has supposedly been studying it for years? A trigger-happy army sniper accidentally wounds Klaatu (which sounds just slightly more alien than Keanu’s real name) which provokes his metal, cyclops-of-a bodyguard to have a laser-shooting conniption. Dr. PB calls for a medic to save Klaatu (is there an alien doctor in the house?) and he’s taken into custody. In a stunning reverse of clichés and alien stereotype, the Secretary of Defense (Kathy Bates) wants to drug and probe him.

Dr. PB helps, sees something she likes in Klaatu’s eyes and helps him escape the evil military's clutches. She and her jerk of a step-son (Will Smith’s son, Jaden) ferry Klaatu around New England until he finds his under-over, alien contact, who of course has assumed the form of an old tiny Japanese man. He tells Klaatu, who of course knows Japanese (why wouldn’t he?), the terrible truth: Mankind is so destructive, they all must perish in order to save the rest of the Planet. Dang it, I KNEW we should have listened to Al Gore and bought hybrids!

The laser-riffic Cyclops dissolves into 7 bajillion titanium termites while Dr. PB takes Klaatu to the one person she hopes can convince him humans are worth saving: Monty Python’s own John Cleese, a brilliant, Bach-loving scientist who recently won the Nobel Prize for his work in – wait for it – altruistic biology. I think that means he buys toys for underprivileged DNA strands at Christmastime and serves homeless genomes turkey dinners at the local shelter at Thanksgiving.

Do they succeed in convincing him we can change? Does the Earth actually stand still? Will Congress pass an auto-maker bail-out package? You’ll have to pay your $8.50 to find out.

Jennifer Connelly, as I already mentioned, is pretty vanilla but does what she can with her remarkably flat character. Mr. Reeves seems to have been preparing his entire post-Excellent Adventure career to play an emotionless being from another world and here it works pretty well. John Cleese’s character is wholly unnecessary and Kathy Bates isn’t bad despite her ridiculous character. As for young Mr. Smith? I’m not much for slapping people, especially children, but he got on my last nerve.

I presume the story is a fairly faithful re-imagining of the original 1951 sci-fi classic (I haven’t seen it), but I came away wanting a little more. Whereas the original served as a precautionary tale against nuclear proliferation, this reiteration is concerned with global warming, I guess. It’s not a bad story, but it’s a vague story that suffers from pacing errors. The Day the Earth Stood Still could have been much tighter, more exhilarating and much more direct in its criticisms (if it actually has any).

Final thought: Someone should take scenes of people "standing still" and make a killer music video to The J. Geils Band's Freeze Frame!