Review of The Man from Earth (2007) by Sean L — 30 Apr 2012

An extremely low-budget, imagination-dependent work of ambitious science fiction, this is a textbook example of substance over style. Set at the farewell after-party for a beloved college professor, it picks up just as the departing prof announces to a small gathering of colleagues that he's been alive since the dawn of humanity.

What follows is an uncut, stream-of-consciousness conversation between the confident subject and his bewildered, skeptical friends as they try to punch holes in his story and decide if he's spouting truth or fiction.

The screenplay is a work of art, slowly gathering steam as the speaker's claims grow larger and wilder. At every step along the way, his audience analyzes the latest revelations from a variety of angles, working through their own misgivings and gradually convincing both themselves and the viewers that there might just be some fire beneath all the smoke.

Sadly, the brilliant plot deserved a better production; bland, redundant camera angles capture a dozen performances on par with bad community theater. It's horribly overacted, with a clunky cast of misfits and journeymen that couldn't find chemistry in a high school textbook.

Still, I can't help but wonder how much of the simplicity that fuels this project would have been lost in the hands of a large, glitzier production. Great food for thought if you can put aside the superficial shortcomings.