The Day I Enjoyed Myself More Than I Should Have Done (The Day The Earth Stood Still [2008] (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	The Day The Earth Stood Still [2008] (DVD)
Date:	06/08/09 (149 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably exciting, nice to look at and some good special effects

Disadvantages: A child that needs gagging or disintegrating - either works for me

A review of just the film, this is the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was released on region 2 DVD in April 2009. The price online is already dropping quite considerably.

When scientist Dr Helen Benson is abruptly rounded up by the US secret service, she is taken to a secret location along with a host of other leading scientific experts. Once they are assembled, they are briefed on a matter of national security; a large alien craft is on a trajectory that will see it impact New York's Central Park within two hours. But at the last minute, the craft fails to impact and instead lands peacefully in the park, where a humanoid creature emerges before a mass of military and police personnel. The creature is taken into custody and displays incredible generative processes, such that within hours it has taken the shape of an adult male human. Initially interrogated by the military, the creature introduces itself as Klaatu, an alien being sent to meet with the world's leaders. But when the request is denied, Klaatu issues a chilling warning for the future of whole mankind and instigates a chain of events that could be the end of life on earth as we know it.....

I'm not entirely opposed to the concept of remaking an old film. Whilst old films were appropriate in their day and often stand the test of time far better than their modern counterparts, there are some stories that are worthy enough to be retold in an era when special effects and modern technology can, potentially, create something exciting and new. The original of The Day the Earth Stood Still was released in 1951 and whilst worthy of the affection and respect from film viewers and critics, is not the masterpiece that some purport it to be.

The remake is, of course, everything that you would expect a modern blockbuster to be. Only marginally thought-provoking, this is a film produced and generated for a very specific reason - to make lots and lots of money. As such, recognising that to generate significant output you need reasonable input, the big budget provides the scope for lots of action, lots of special effects and the frantic, dizzying pace reflects the need to keep the audience entertained enough so that they don't question any of the rather patchy detail. It's not the car crash that some reviewers would have you believe, but it's wise not to pause too long or else the average audience member will find himself picking it apart at the seams.

There are hints and flavours of other recent sci-fi blockbusters here, notably Independence Day, which had a more humorous lilt to keep the spirits high but employed the same grandiose approach to the spectacle of global disaster. Like Independence Day, The Day is one of those films that should serve as a warning to mankind that their number could be up and the rest of the film's running time is spent trying to avert a species-threatening disaster. It seems that we're being watched, and our audience is finally running out of patience with our unethical little ways, with one resounding solution. From there on in, it's a clicking tock situation where our heroine, Dr Benson, does her best to persuade an alien race that mankind isn't so bad after all.

But The Day is, initially at least, rather more sinister and mysterious than Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. As the world gathers and watches to see what will happen, the reaction is immediate hostility, unlike the celebratory welcoming parties that adorned the rooftops in Emmerich's picture. There's a foreboding air to the proceedings as the alien Klaatu refuses to reveal his intentions and for some time, the audience doesn't know whether to be frightened or not. It's in these earlier scenes that director Scott Derrickson achieves the most. Unsure of what will happen next, it's never entirely clear whether this is an invasion tale or not and fear of the unknown is the director's greatest asset. Sadly, as it moves into its second act, it becomes a rather more predictable enterprise, even if the big-budget action scenes provide the spectacle required to entertain us whilst Klaatu decides whether to save us or not.

Of course, it's a rather ill-conceived, conceited notion. The writer (David Scarpa) seems intent on suggesting that those there humans aren't so bad after all and deserve another chance, when of course nothing could be farther from the truth. Clogging up the planet with unwanted children, polluting the atmosphere and wasting every natural resource at its disposal, mankind is almost certainly destined for disaster and I'm afraid it would take more than one teary-eyed woman and her moppet-like child to convince your average intergalactic adjudicator. Indeed, what is it that persuades the alien race to change its mind? In The Day, all the audience sees is a woman that's protective of her offspring, but this is just a natural survival instinct that, in ecological terms, simply guarantees the maintenance and proliferation of more and more parasitic humans. Scarpa takes the easy way out and suggests that there's something redeeming about the human race, as though the audience simply couldn't cope with any other kind of action.

Like many mindless blockbusters, the narrative is peppered with little bouts of action, intended to ensure that the audience hasn't accidentally nodded off. These are the film's most memorable moments and wouldn't have disappointed the waiting, popcorn-munching audience. The computer-generated GORT is rather more impressive here, affectionately retaining most of the look and feel of his 1950s counterpart, albeit on a rather larger scale. GORT's eventual capabilities are nicely done, with a nasty enough edge to make this realistic without being unpleasant and there are some great scenes of carnage towards the end. In fairness to the director, the brief was for a blockbuster and it's safe to say that Derrickson busts plenty of blocks.

As the alien visitor Klaatu, Keanu Reeves is almost perfectly cast, given only that the role demands that he is wooden and emotionless (qualities that Reeves fairly exudes). Indeed, Reeves is probably the only good casting choice here in a film that suffers terribly from ill-conceived characterisation. The need to add Will Smith's mop-haired son Jaden as a bit of emotional interest for our heroine Helen Benson is a really bad idea and the whinging, irritating little brat engenders nothing positive. Jennifer Connelly is reasonably convincing as Dr Helen Benson, but seems out of place in a dominant lead role and it's easy to imagine more appropriate choices (Jodie Foster would have been excellent, for example.) Kathy Bates is excruciatingly unconvincing as the Secretary of Defence and looks so uncomfortable it's almost as if she knows how useless she is. Robert Knepper (T-Bag in Prison Break) is running the risk of massive over-exposure and a short cameo from John Cleese as a Nobel prize-winning professor seems a little underused.

But, the fact remains that the whole thing hangs together rather well, albeit in a very undemanding fashion and although the narrative is littered with lots of plot holes, there's nothing that actually 'looks' bad in this, and that's saying something, at least. This is one of the productions that, in some way, would have been close to heresy and could probably have never garnered popularity, but, expecting something truly awful as I was, I found something much more likeable than I expected. But I'd still have killed the kid.

Summary: Remake of the 1950s 'classic' that isn't the car crash you might be expecting