The close encounter in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” doesn’t exactly begin with a warm “how do you do” for the being sent to warn humans they are on the wrong course.When the visitor emerges from a giant sphere parked in Central Park, he’s shot.
What happens once the wounded extraterrestrial is transported to a secure location to be operated on feels like a scene from one of those Discovery Health trauma shows: “E.T. with a GSW to the ER, stat.”
“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” starring Keanu Reeves as alien Klaatu, is a slight, goofy, sentimental riff on humans — our catastrophe-courting foibles, as well as our goodness.
Casting Reeves as the alien that a surgeon discovers encased in a placental goo makes sense. The actor has a gift for looking slightly new to the world. And he maintains the pose of being fresh to this planet and his human form throughout.
Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly plays astrobiologist Helen Benson. One of a number of scientists the government enlists (kidnaps is more like it), she becomes Klaatu’s guide. She is also our representative of human decency.
Director Scott Derrickson and writer David Scarpa have updated Edmund H. North’s script for the 1951 sci-fi flick. In place of a Cold War allegory about an alien that comes to chide humans for their violence toward each other, they’ve delivered a global-warming parable.
Poor Earth. Poor humans. It’s no surprise that the latter need the former more than the reverse. Not unlike last year’s very earnest enviro-doc, “The 11th Hour,” this cautionary flick isn’t just about our sorry stewardship of the planet. It also mourns humankind’s potential demise.
A melancholy ache runs through “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” In a roadside diner, an alien who has lived among us for 70 years reports to Klaatu that humans are destructive. Still, he doesn’t want to leave.
Our potential for kindness is embodied in the relationship between Helen and stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith of “The Pursuit of Happyness”). She loves him. Angry at the death of his father, he rebuffs her. She remains constant.
One of the film’s sweeter moments comes early, when a soldier catches Helen talking on a prohibited cellphone to Jacob. It’s a scene that asserts that we are creatures of profound attachments. Some are even worthwhile.
Still, the initial lesson gleaned from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is that humans overreact mightily to the unknown.
Kathy Bates plays Regina Jackson, the secretary of defense. The prez and the veep are already hunkered in their respective bunkers. So she’s the movie’s muscle in a situation that could have used some soft-power diplomacy.
There’s not a lot of sophistication to the screenplay’s depiction of global politics in crisis. The smarts, such as they are, are poured into the science, or at least how scientists are portrayed. They are a curious bunch, not immune to shock and awe and, sigh, hope.
Mathematicians and other braniacs in the audience may get a giggle out of the equation found on the blackboard of professor Barnhardt, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Helen and Klaatu visit.
The rest might get a kick out of the guy who plays him, John Cleese (“What is my theory? This is it. . . .”)
For a too-brief moment, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” looks like it might honor its cheesier 1950s origins. In a ravaging soundstage storm, a lone explorer (also Reeves) comes across an orb that looks like a cross between a giant marble and a murky crystal ball.
What does it portend? Not all we’d have hoped for.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” doesn’t lack heart. It’s surprisingly sincere.
No, the human quality it could use a bit more of is humor.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still”
PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence. 1 hour, 43 minutes. Directed by Scott Derrickson; written by David Scarpa; based on Edmund H. North’s original screenplay; photography by David Tattersall; starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm. Opens today at area theaters.
