Fifteen or twenty years ago, the idea of M. Night Shyamalan
directing Will Smith in a science fiction adventure would have been an exciting
one; both men were able to churn out critical and box-office success seemingly
at ease. A lot of things have changed since then, and here in 2013 the two
finally team-up in AFTER EARTH.
A crash landing leaves teenager Kitai (Jaden Smith, son of
Will) and his father Cypher (Will Smith, father of Jaden) stranded on Earth,
1,000 years after humanity has abandoned the planet. With Cypher injured, Kitai
must take a dangerous journey to get help while evading dangerous animal
species that now inhabit the wild planet, and an alien which escaped the crash.
AFTER EARTH sets itself up to be an intimate father-son
story, as Kitai must face his issues with daddy and his own fears to save both
their lives. Once the crash happens, great steps are taken to set the stage for
what Kitai must go through, and it is there the movie immediately falls into a
mundane and routine affair. As Cypher explains every single obstacle and
adversary out in the wild, the audience can right away put together every
single thing that will happen in the movie. It just comes one step short of
having a road-map in your lap while viewing. It’s a goal-driven movie sprinkled
with light character interaction which feels right at home in a video game, but
shallow on the big screen.
The predictability is made worse by the absence of any sort
of personal touch by director M. Night Shyamalan. M. Night brings nothing of
worth to the film; his characters are boring, the action sequences are
thrill-less, and the attempted scares fall flat. There is no spirit or energy
to be found, and worse, no heartbeat for a father-son drama. The script takes
too much advantage of convenient plot devices and points (technology is used as
a crutch for the filmmakers to move things along and get out of tight spots),
and also takes massive leaps in its own logic. While some of the visuals of the
environment are wonderfully realized, the CGI creatures are un-convincing, and
the score is as generic as elevator music.
M. Night deserves some sort of award for sucking all of the
charisma and fun out of Will Smith. Smith blurts out his lines with less
emotion than an infernal talking Apple device, and he never once is interesting
or lovable as a father figure. It doesn’t help that the man spends 90% of the
movie stuck in a chair, but even with such a limitation M. Night and Smith
should have been able to generate some sort of spark. Jaden Smith fares no
better and is as wooden as his father, and his big, mid-film emotional moment
is nothing short of laughable. The best acting in the film surprisingly goes to
Zoe Kravitz, who appears here and there in scattered, albeit useless flashbacks.
The finale arrives the same way every other event in the
film does; with a predictable and ineffective thud. Everything that leads up to
the lame attempt at family drama for an emotional punch at the end is too light
and weak to be of any use. It seems that M. Night and Will Smith did not bring
any of themselves into this collaboration, and one can only hope that they
never decide to do it again. Once is certainly enough.
BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it
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