The Day The Earth Stood Still

I have 2 major concerns of the movie; castings & plot.

THE CASTING

I like Keanu Reeves. I really do. He’s one of the best one-only expressioned faced actors out there. With a list that includes attention craving Jim Carrey and many basketball players, he faces stiff competition to be where he is.

If you think I’m being sarcastic, it’s because I am. I’m going to be nice and not mention anything about Bill and Ted and how he probably got his brain cut in half to imerse himself in the world of idocracy. His past few films hasn’t really helped him to explore his range of expressions or maybe it was down to his own style of acting.

When watching him in “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Look, it’s Neo as an alien.” But then I corrected myself, “No, it’s John Constantine 2.”

I think that the casting of Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense is to remind the general US public of the consequences of voting Sarah Palin as President should she ever succeed in convincing the Republicans. I’m not against females in high places but Kathy was unconvincing as a person that would be chosen to lead the defences of the US.

The highlight for me was to see that guy from Early Edition, Kylie Chandler. I couldn’t recognise him at first but it all came back to me after mentally removing his facial hair and turning the clock a bit.

The Plot

Did they get Al Gore to co-write the adapted script? My work does involve environment conservation and forest rehabilitation but even I thought the plot was somewhat stupid. The story had a slow pick-up and finished quite hastily. It’s probably argued that the first came 9 years after WWII which would have moulded it’s plot to be anti-violence so the remake should be relevant to the current issues of environment and climate change. Still, it was boring. It looked like “The Inconvenient Truth” with a story line and real actors.

So the only thing I liked about the movie was GORT. It was cool and it should have played a bigger part in the story as opposed to the story being focused around the relationship between a single mom and her step-son.