LITERAL REMAINS

This is probably the biggest disappointment I’ve seen all year. For fans of the 1951 original, this is bottom dwelling at its big-budget Hollywood best: pretty lights and style, but no substance. If you’ve never seen the original, then this may pass as an adequate Matrix sequel.

Klaatu, as played stiltedly by Keanu Reeves, is sent to Earth by an intergalactic joint commission on life, the universe, and everything, to evaluate us humans as worth saving or expendable for the greater good of the planet. If you have seen the better-than-the-movie trailer, you know already going into it that if we live, the Earth dies, but if we humans die, the Earth lives. Environmental concern is a nice, and topical, update from the Cold War Nuclear Holocaust scare of the original, up to date and topical for its time as well, but nothing is really done to capitalize on such a massive threat. The movie should be big, big, and bigger, but it sits firmly in the middle of the road and feels pretty insular. It’s a lead balloon striving for take-off.

The original was ominous, mysterious, and thrilling. It had heart and soul. This remake is fluffy and baffling, unable to deliver on its big plot. Michael Rennie’s original Klaatu had personality, was engaging and interesting; Reeves has flat affect for the whole show, even when he has his big change of heart. Certainly not all aliens will be this…this…Keanu-like. Sadly, Gort is depressing, though still livelier than Reeves’ Klaatu, but Jennifer Connelly and John Cleese outdo the CGI, giving this film what little heart and soul it does possess.

Yet, somewhere, somehow, in this flawed jumble of a movie, there is a watchable piece of SF entertainment. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something here made me like it better than I expected, and makes me not dislike it as much as I probably should. It’s not the worst film of the year. Just the most disappointing, for me.

My score: 3 out of 5

the_novacula