Review of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) by Chads. — 13 Dec 2008

The human whose likeness that Klaatu(Keanu Reeves) appropriates as easy comprehension for earthling contemplation, originally had a beard. Klaatu shaved. And sports a better haircut than his Reinhold Messner-like counterpart.

That's one vain alien. Reeves' smooth face recalls the diatribe put forth by Bruce Willis in Barry Levinson's "What Just Happened" about the fallacy of audience defamiliarization.

In Reeves' case, however, it's a matter of professional courtesy that the facial outgrowths excuse themselves from its host. The chin tufts might out act him(there's not a world of difference between Klaatu and Reeves' human performance in "Street Kings").

When Klaatu emerges from the spherical ark, he's wearing a protective suit made out of living tissue. Which begs the question: Why bother with making a preliminary trip to try on human bodies if you're going to hide it under a deluge of white jelly? The biggest difference between the 1951 Robert Wise production and this egregious update is, of course, Klaatu himself, who comes off as a Sierra Club militant, or perhaps, a member of the Green party's galactic predecessors, the Mean Green party.

In the nuclear age sci-fi classic, Klaatu offers the human race, a cure for cancer, and is shot for its humanitarian efforts. This update of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", in a sense, blasphemes the original, because Klaatu deserves the bullet.

The alien is like Al Gore with an axe to grind. Bush stole the election in 2000, so Captain Ozone's doppelganger is going to steal the earth. Needless to say, Klaatu comes off as smug. The only people that Klaatu comes in contact with is a biologist(Jennifer Connelly) and her stepchild(Jaden Smith).

It's an insult to the peacenik nature of the original Klaatu that Jacob has to teach the alien not to kill. Echoes of Edward Furlong in James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" educating the governor of California in pacifist ways loom loudly while this makeshift nuclear family eludes the law.

Since Klaatu's visage is human-based, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" might have benefited dramatically had the original man's loved ones reconnected with this ghost in order to mount a defense for the human race's ongoing survival.

At a cemetary, Jacob almost veers the movie into "Pet Cemetary" territory.