Review of After Earth (2013) by Skulb — 14 Feb 2014

The only thing raising this turkey above zero is the fact that, as far as I could tell, there weren`t any microphones poking into any shots or any sets collapsing in the background. The movie is so bad I just stopped watching and went to bed about 2/3 of the way in, which is rare.

I never really liked Smith. He has goofy and some weird tough guy act which makes him look as if he`s being zapped with a cattle prod, and if you don`t like those he`s out. But his son is worse. Ranging between whining about his father and crying to tantrums, his most regular appearance is of a dull boy who has just been shot in the ass with a tranquilizer gun. Fortunately he is so bad that in a lame attempt to hide this fact he doesn`t have any lines in a lot of scenes, but just stands there nodding or repeating the other actor`s lines, like some slow kid who has been brought up in front of the class to be mocked and ridiculed. It would be funny if it wasn`t so unbearably sanctimonious.

I suppose we could admire Smith JR for trying to lead a movie right in the middle of his awkward phase, sporting his freshly shaved 14 hair mustache look; but personally I`m not sure I`d have hired him to play a cow in a primary school nativity play. He constantly has this weird, annoying grimace on, which I didn`t realize was supposed to convey fear until I read reviews online after suffering through the movie, And this leads us the the "message" in this awful turkey, which is that fear is bad and that you can`t kill space bugs when you`re afraid.

Detailing all the weird plot holes in After Earth is an entire study in itself, and due to my profound lack of interest in the movie I probably missed a few, but here goes anyway: First of all humans in the movie are able to build inter stellar space craft but apparently not guns of any kind, which is presumably why they are being hunted by blind bugs. In the movie`s only promising moment Will Smith gets sucked out of a crashing space ship far above the canopy of the forest, and for a second you are tricked into believing that the director has just killed off his overpaid, overrated Hollywood degenerate 15 minutes into the movie, leaving his untalented son to lead the movie by himself, as a sort of girlish, black Tom Hanks Castaway in space. But then he miraculously reappears on the ground almost immediately; unconscious and with two broken legs, but exactly as robotic and dull as before. Then the most comical parts of the movie occur when the incapable son is sent to retrieve a transmitter from the tail of the vehicle, which crashed where Will Smith`s corpse should probably have landed. According to the lifeless Will Smith night time brings intense cold which ravages the land so that any humans caught outdoors will instantly freeze to death, even though every single stinking scene in the movie is set in lush forest surroundings. So the question is: if the cold will kill Will`s brain damaged son instantly, how come all the trees still have leaves on and baboons can live there because it`s so nice and warm?

Never mind this nonsense though because the solution to this weird problem is "hot zones" at regular intervals between the ship from which the immobilized Will Smith is directing his comatose progeny and the tail to which said son must travel. As long as he reaches a "hot zone" every evening before the harmless cold kills him he`ll be all fine and dandy. How convenient! How a grown man could have written such awful trash is a mystery, as is how he might then have been able to convince another grown man to direct it for him, dragging their names and the names of all associated with them into the mud.

Every aspect of this movie, short of some of the special effects and I guess pretty shots of forest (the one not having been killed by the intense cold I mentioned), is absolutely horrible. I would rather download old episodes of Lost in Space from the mid 60s than watch After Earth again, special effects be damned! By far and away the worst movie of 2013 that I`m aware of. And Smith JR should go back to school at once.