01/05/2017

After Earth

                 
A neat concept, but terrible, terrible execution. Terrible. 
               
So it's a thousand years after humans left Earth for reasons. Then Will Smith and his son (who is just as terrible as he is) come back or crash or something, and everything is terrible and they want to leave. I wanted to leave, too. The moral or the story is not to force your kids to do what you've failed at. Will Smith can be funny, but he can't do serious very well, and he sucked even more than usual in this. His kid did even worse, but in a similar way. 
The movie is both dumb and dull. The effects are flashy but terrible for the year of release. The plot is fairly non-existent, with very little happening for the middle portion of the film. We start with a cool crash sequence, but then that's about it. “Everything has evolved to kill humans” Smith says, but why? Humans haven't been on the planet since the 21st century, right? So... what? And how did all the animal and plant life evolve so much in a thousand years? Shouldn't it take at least fifty times that long for them to be even noticeably different? What? What's happening?!
           
                    
I'm mostly curious about the backstory of this one (oh, I'm done with talking about the content - it's dull and superficially pretentious and you shouldn't watch it). Did Will Smith make his son do this, or did he sort of let him do whatever he wanted? (the plot certainly feels like a child wrote it) Was his son at all on board, or is he angry at his father and perhaps being shit on purpose? I'd watch a making-of documentary about this film (so long as it was made by a third party and was less than twenty minutes long). Whatever the case it's messed up and weird, and I hate that someone like Will Smith has enough money and influence in Hollywood to do something like this. Terrible.
             
I said the word "terrible" seven times in this review, which may be a record.
                
After Earth: 8.2