Review

Review Date: 14-December-08
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

I believe I have mentioned before how fond I am of Hollywood apocalypse flicks. Usually released in the summer, the better to attract idle teens, they feature a reliably amusing array of doughty everyman heroes, barking military guys out of their league, and worldwide tourist attractions in big, shiny peril. In recent years the genre has embellished its frivolity with a topical message, and in this vein we have a remake of the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. I have not seen the original, but if it bore the same environmental warning as this one, the intervening decades are proof that it fell on deaf ears.

But why spend your time worrying about the end of the world when you can sit in a dark theater and watch Keanu Reeves lending his odd stiffness to the role of an alien? In this yuletide flirtation with the apocalypse, he arrives on Earth in a swirling globe of galactic energy and gets shot before he can utter a "howdy." (This happens in New York City, so it is not surprising.) The one human who does not want to kill, imprison, or mistreat him is a microbiologist (Jennifer Connolly) commandeered by the government to address the appearance of his spaceship and others like it around the world. She pities and is fascinated by him, so he turns to her after escaping the clutches of the Secretary of Defense (Kathy Bates). Amid the slight plot that follows, it comes out that his civilization loves Earth but has no respect for humankind and its destructive tendencies. So he has come to tell humans that the end is nigh, backed by a giant indestructible robot. However, his contact with the scientist and her beloved stepson give him a new understanding of our species. The boy is played by Jaden Smith, who clearly inherited his father Will's charm and is cute enough to sway the fate of billions.

My indifference as to whether the movie's warning has been heeded should not be held against me, for I am only human. All sci-fi, no matter how cheesy, gets me thinking, and what this Day made me think is that it is nonsensical to separate human folly from the concept of Earth. For Keanu's gloomy visitor to say that Earth should be saved from humans is in its own way disrespectful of the planet, since humans are as much a product of Earth as the flowers and animals and majestic rock formations we are nowadays asked to revere. Humanity's stupidity and shortsightedness are just as natural as they are lamentable, and how ridiculous to assume that if we were expunged the ongoing tide of evolution would not yield an equally irresponsible successor. That said, I like the movie's point about our capacity for change and what activates it. Almost as much as UFOs over the Great Pyramids, I enjoy how people continue to argue that we are worth saving even though we are careless and arrogant enough to destroy the very habitat that sustains us.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.