Review of Another Earth (2011) by Michael H — 25 Jan 2012

Pretentious pap. A promising idea is squandered by being reduced to little more than a backdrop for what is--at its heart--a trite melodrama told with the amount of depth you would expect from underachieving graduate students. I have no issue with a plot (even a crazy sci-fi one) taking a backseat to character, but the film is hopelessly false, which undermines the effort.

Aside from focusing on a thoroughly uninteresting main character (played capably by newcomer Brit Marling, who has better roles ahead of her), the movie hinges on a ludicrous plot point that would never happen in real life. Because real people do not behave this way, only trite movie characters do. The film wants to earn its Sundance-indie cred by constructing a character piece, but it's too lazy to develop, you know, actual characters that feel like real people. The emotional heart of the film is hollow.

There are flashes of interesting things here -- a creepy scene involving communication between the two earths, and some nicely integrated visual effects for such a low-budget film, but much of the film is chock-a-block with scenes where the main character wanders around and stares into nothingness, her head full of meaningless thoughts that she helpfully narrates for us, because seeing so many shots of her being visibly sad might not be enough for us to correctly interpret that she is sad.Shot and edited with little personality, this feels like the work of first-timers who clearly have talent, and will one day make a film much better than this one.