Review of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) by Miona J — 25 Dec 2011

This movie is an example of everything that is wrong with the Hollywood studio system. Take a shitload of money, a helping of brand name stars, an overload of special effects and throw enough at the screen for long enough for some of it to stick.

I want to say that this was a terrible film and by all rights it was, but there were very small things that made me give this 3/5 stars. The opening was great, it built up in much the same way that the much much much superior original film did.

A sense of suspense, a sense of wonder, of course all that is tainted with the inevitable sense of dread, because we know from the trailer how this plays out. Everything that this movie got right initially it abandons quickly and replaces it all with cliche after cliche after cliche.

I like to think for all our fearfulness and destructiveness that our first act upon initial contact wouldn't be some stupid playground dick-waving contest. Kathy Bates is great as, well as a bitch, Jennifer Connoly is great as the weepy-eyed, underneath-it-all-i'm-sad single mom, John Cleese in a blink and you'll miss it cameo is woefully wasted and that is the great crime of this remake.

If it was all terrible it would be expected, but it tries and actually starts to try and be a discussion on human nature, or proclivity for destructiveness, or rash decisions made all the more worse by the military ordinance that can back them up, and so forth.

The filmmakers tried so hard to be an exciting, special effects message movie about the future of our planet and the future of the human race in an era where we possess the power to obliterate everything but poverty and disease.

This film's greatest failing is that it had the kernels of potential up there on the screen for all to see, but lost it's way in the haze of dazzling, but been-there-seen-it-before special effects.

And the ending...well the ending of this movie plays out like they decided to end the film when the sfx budget ran out, oops there goes our last million, and cut! Just astonishing how much money is wasted on such a pastiche of abandoned ideas.

Shame on you hollywood.