Day the Earth Stood Still

I, for one, will welcome our alien overlords when they come. Maybe they will enslave us all and strap the humans to machines that continuously milk our prostates for the vital juices the extra-terrestrials need to survive. Maybe they will scorch the earth and rend from its soil all of the natural resources and riches. Maybe they'll force us all to work in factories making frozen bean and cheese burritos to be sold at 7-Eleven. Any of these would be better than the way things are now. First, the enslavement would be sweet. Have you ever seen how hot chicks look when they are scantily clad and bound in chains? Even the skinny girls. I'd take a chance that I might get shackled to one of the hot chicks in the laundry dungeon. Second, scorching the earth wouldn't be much worse than another Starbuck's on the corner. Actually, I've never been in a Starbuck's, but I've noticed that the people going in are assholes, and the people coming out are assholes. So, whatever they sell isn't helping those people. Third, if you've ever spent ten bucks on convenience store burritos, you know it ain't hard to make them. Hell, sometimes they don't even bother putting in beans or cheese, just rats and boogers and short curly hairs. That can't be worse than working at the Family Dollar. Finally, if alien overlords take over the world, they're gonna make better movies than The Day the Earth Stood Still. They couldn't possibly make them worse.

The only thing that would make aliens suck ass is if they were as preachy and judgmental as, say, my family. "You ruin everything!" "Don't bother now, it's too late!" and "God dammit, Matt! You just drank Mom's bone medicine!" Naggy, pompous aliens are exactly the kind that come to visit in The Day the Earth Stood Still, a John Tesh-sized pile of new age turd. It is a remake of a pretty boring 1951 movie that was supposed to be a cold war message about the race to nuclear annihilation.

In this new, more boring version, Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, a human-looking alien from far, far away who has come to repossess the earth. Apparently, humans aren't doing a good enough job with it, so we need to be wiped out. Jennifer Connelly, whose hotness is as wasted as the Harelip on the fifth of each month, plays an astrobiology professor who, along with a nuclear physicist, and a civil engineer, is abducted by the federal government,. The feds have spotted a UFO approaching the earth and want help. First, professors don't know jack shit about solving problems. All they know about is finding them and then asking for money to study them. Second, the only thing civil engineers know how to do is stick their thumbs up their asses and declare themselves water-tight.

When the UFO lands, Keanu Reeves pops out, along with a giant robot whose face lights up like KITT from Knight Rider. Mostly, the giant robot stands around, bored and sulking, like a teenager in a small town. It's hard to tell which is a worse or more stiff actor between Reeves and the robot, but I'm gonna have to go with the dude. Somehow, he's found his perfect role: a flat-faced dullard who shows no emotion and speaks in monotone.

Connelly, a lonely widower, befriends him and tries to talk him out of his plan, which is to kill off all the humans so the earth "can heal itself". It's some new-agey bullshit like that mostly seen in the liner notes of Enya records or in the homemade brochures of aromatherapists in Sedona who will rent you time in their copper pyramids.

The bulk of the movie is a slow-motion, uninteresting chase where Reeves, Connelly and a sassy little boy ride around in a hybrid Honda Civic trying to avoid the dimmest government agents outside of real government agents. Reeves never even breaks a sweat or tries much to hide. If they can't find a space alien not trying to hide along the eastern seaboard, no wonder the pigs can't catch Osama bin Laden, D. B. Cooper or the fucker who stole my Schwinn Sting Ray when I was seven.

Reeves character is supposed to be the product of a genetic sample the aliens took 80 years ago. In the movie, he meets with another alien in human form, an old Chinese man, who has been on earth for decades. Where the fuck did his genetic code come from? How many more are there? Is this supposedly advanced group of space aliens basing their decision to wipe out the human race on the data provided by a single old dude who likes McDonald's coffee and needs his grandson to drive him around? Fuck, these space aliens may be as bad at science as the makers of this movie are at science fiction.

In the end, Reeves decides that the human race can change enough to save the earth themselves. Save it from what is never made clear. Probably because the Hollywood grassfuckers who dumped this steamer are a bunch of pussies. They're such big fucking babies that they made a huge blockbuster "message" movie but pussed out on actually stating a message. They're too fucking scared of AM radio talk show hosts to say "save the earth from environmental destruction" or "save the earth from our violent tendencies" or "save the earth from Arena Football and NASCAR". God forbid, you wouldn't want to fire up dumbfucks like Glenn Beck or Neal Boortz or any of the other dickweeds whose job it is to feign self-righteous outrage. Their wingnut listeners might just blog about it. Instead, the movie just says the earth is dying and it's our fault. Fucking cowards.

Reeves, being the advanced space race he is, sees Connelly and her stepson in a weak plot contrivance, bawling their eyes out and promising they'll be nicer to each other. He decides that, okay, he'll spare the human race after all. This is supposed to trigger the final act and the story's climax. There's not much to it, though. The silly-looking robot shown earlier dissolves into little metal-eating locusts who can eat anything in their path, but only eat large objects suitable for special effects. Reeves stops them by holding out his hands. The earth returns to normal. The alien splits without even telling the humans how to fix shit up. The end.

Besides the obvious problem of the movie sucking so hard it could take the wiener right out of a corn dog, it's absurd. We're supposed to feel guilty just because some space alien says we're fucking up the planet? That it's not our planet to fuck up? Fuck the busybody from outer space. Why the fuck is everyone feeling so guilty in this movie and just accepting the alien is right? All the movie's characters say "we can change." Where is that old American spirit of at least asking how and what does he mean, and let's see some proof. And let's see what you did with your planet that makes it so great? The Day the Earth Stood Still is populated by people who have some deep-seated guilt and are just waiting for some outsider to say "shame, shame." That's not the earthlings I know. The ones I know tell busybodies to go fuck themselves and are proud of themselves, regardless of being right or wrong. Case in point: every fucker who bases his global warming position on what he wants to believe, not on fact.

Fucking piece of fucking shit from a motherfucker's ass. This movie is about as retarded as my cousin Larry, but without any of the charm and with a hell of a lot more shit in its trousers. The acting is stilted and dull. The action is almost non-existent. The most exciting things that happen are a kid almost falls off a bridge and a bunch of bugs eat a truck. The special effects suck corn ass. I think they were going for some sort of update of the original 1950's The Day the Earth Stood Still, which you'll hear a lot of people rave about. Be careful, it's a pretty damn boring and preachy movie too.

Beyond sucking every orifice on a goat, the "science" in the science fiction is about as reliable as the technology behind "Seen on TV" gas-saving devices and anything Billy Mays sells. Connelly is an astrobiologist, but somehow she also knows her way around a pharmacy and how to give shots? Remind me to have an economics professor look me over next time I have the flu. When faced with what is obviously a space alien, the world's top scientists want to get his heart rate. To compare to what? What fucking information would that give, even assuming some extra-terrestrial life-form has a heart. It just goes to show, once again, that bad writers and directors can't create characters smarter than themselves.

Bring it on, space aliens. Come to our planet, enslave us, kill us. Whatever you need to do. Just don't make any more shitty movies. One Finger for The Day the Earth Stood Still.