The Day the Earth Stood Still

Keanu’s perfectly cast for this and the movie grabs you right away, skillfully showing the terrifying urgency of how an alien encounter might be handled behind the scenes. Jennifer Connelly stoically services the story in her impossibly pretty way and for a while there it seems like it’s all going to be okay. Then we start to get to know her son, played by Jaden Pinket-Smith and it all starts to go down hill. He’s the most hate-able little fucker to roll up on the big screen since Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. He was ungrateful, bratty, and had all the subtlety of a flying brick. I hated his hair! To be fair, the script is partially to blame, creating such an unlikable little bastard. It would be a tough character for anybody to take on, much less a child actor. And so much of the story rests on this kid, all engines fail very quickly. There is also a really frustrating negligence of logic near the end that completely nullifies the neat opening. There are some things to like here. Keanu’s perfectly nestled in his sci-fi element. And there’s some nifty robotic locusts that show up at one point. But yow! The ending was a dud.