After Earth (2013)

Is the twist that M. Night Shyamalan and George Lucas are really the same person?

That's the thought that kept running through my head through most of After Earth.  It has many elements that reminded me of the Star Wars prequels: weird accents, flat characters, bad dialog, overreliance on CG, and it centers around an annoying teen you never really care about.  Is there a typical M. Night twist in the film?  If you count a totally predictable plot/character development that's telegraphed from the opening scene of the film, then yes.

After Earth takes place 1000 years in the future.  Humanity has relocated to another planet outside the solar system called Nova Prime.  While on Nova Prime, they encountered an alien force that operated on sensing human pheromones, especially fear.  Cypher (Will Smith) was able to defeat these aliens, as he has no fear, so he's effectively blind to these aliens since he doesn't give off any fear pheromones.  This is all explained in the first five minutes with a really awful narration delivered by Cypher's son Kitai (Jaden Smith).  What makes it awful is that he's speaking with a weird, made-up accent that made it very difficult to understand what he was saying at times.  The other characters in the film spoke with it as well (Will Smith's seemed to disappear as the movie went on).  It was a totally unnecessary detail thrown in the film that added nothing to the story, other than make it harder to understand the characters.  It's odd that they even spent so much time creating an accent for this society (even though they are from Earth), and desigining all of these cites when they spend maybe five total minutes on this planet.

Cypher and Kitai don't have much of a relationship, so his wife (Sophie Okonedo) urges him to take Kitai along on a routine mission.  The ship is damaged in flight, however, and they are forced to crash land on Earth.  Coincidentally, Cypher and Kitai are the only two survivors.  Their ship is beyond repair and Cypher is hurt and cannot move.  Kitai must get to the tail section of the ship to activate an emergency beacon, but it's several days away.  Earth is a much different and dangerous place since humanity left it, but if Kitai follows Cypher's instructions he believes they will succeed.

That's pretty much all there is to the story, which is a problem as it slugs along.  It's never very exciting or even all that interesting.  We're forced to follow Kitai as he continues to disobey his father's direct orders for no reason.  He even falls asleep at crucial moments.  Part of the problem is that Jaden Smith is just not a strong or charismatic enough actor to carry the movie in the first place.  It's worsened by the fact that his character is written as a typical, annoying teen.  Plus, he always looks like he's about to cry.

If you think his Dad could save this, he doesn't.  In fact, Will Smith barely even feels connected to the film.  Since he can't move, he spends the entire film sitting in a cockpit delivering instructions through a communication device.  If this was supposed to be a movie about a father and son bonding, it would have been more effective to keep these two together for the duration of the adventure.  There's no connection or chemistry between the two as a result.

The CG was terrible.  Most of the creatures looked completely fake, and was of the quality you'd expect to see on an original movie on SyFy.  The main threat not only had a bad design where you can't tell its head from his ass, but it does that thing I can't stand where it moves so impossibly fast that there's no way anyone would last in a fight for more than two seconds against it.  It's as if the CG was almost an afterthought, and then I find out that when Will Smith came up with the story for this, it wasn't even originally conceived as a sci-fi film.  In fact, the title itself is misleading as this could have taken place anywhere, or at any time.  It didn't need to be in the future, or even on Earth.  It could have taken place in just a random forest for all it mattered.  It's like Smith, Shyamalan, and co-writer Gary Whitta randomly decided to set in the future simply because they thought it would be cool.  Plus, they could pump up the budget with unnecessary CG.  Instead, they created a world that we're all totally detached from, when it could have been an uplifting stroy about a father and son.

After Earth is a boring, lifeless, uninspired sci-film that seems to serve only as a vehicle to push Jaden Smith on us again.  It also shows us that M. Night Shyamalan is completely out of gas as a director.  This was not worthy of a release during the Summer blockbuster season.  Skip this one.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Star

Men in Black 3 (2012) - Movie Review

"Threequels" tend to have a pretty bad track record, especially when nearly 10 years has passed since the last film.  After the lackluster MiB 2, was anyone really demanding another?  There's a reason why it's been 10 years.  Anyway, the good news is that while not as strong as the original MiB, MiB 3 is a mostly entertaining, but flawed addition to the series.

An alien criminal, Boris the Animal, played by an unrecognizable Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), escapes a secret Lunar prison that contains the worst aliens out there.  Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) imprisoned him back in 1969, shooting off one of his arms in the process.  Boris wants revenge, and plans to travel back in time, not only to kill Agent K, but do it before he loses his arm.  Making matters worse, killing Agent K in the past prevents him from deploying a defense grid around that Earth that would have stopped the invasion of Boris' people and led to their extinction.

Boris succeeds, but Agent J (Will Smith) is somehow able to detect the fracture in the timeline.  He also goes back in time to stop Boris and restore the original timeline.  The movie picks up once Agent J arrives in 1969.  Fortunately, the movie avoids using the 60's to make fun of the times or use a lot of lame fish-out-of-water jokes  There are a few here and there, but I felt they worked since they didn't overdo it.  It sticks more to the task at hand.

You meet the younger version of Agent O (Alice Eve), but she's really not in the movie much.  This also goes for the modern version of Agent O (Emma Thompson).  This is one of the missed opportunities of the film, as it is consistently implied that Agents K and O may have had a thing at some point, but it's never developed and it's a thread that goes nowhere.

MiB 3, starts off a little rough, with some really labored and stunted dialog.  I had heard that they went into filming without a story or script and it feels like it at first.  Speaking of dialog, Will Smith seems like he's been out of it a little too long, as much of his ad-libbed dialog seemed out of date by a decade or so.   You know, like when your Dad or Uncle tries to relate to you and uses slang that nobody says anymore?  It felt like that.  Will Smith was his typical, charismatic self otherwise.

There's a lot about MiB 3 that felt underdeveloped.  In the early parts of the film, it seems like they are going to get into K's history and his motivation a bit more, but then by the time the movie ends you realize that none of the questions that are setup in the beginning are ever answered.  You still know the same amount about the characters as you did before.

As much as I like Jermaine Clement, he wasn't given a lot to do as Boris the Animal.  He doesn't have much in the way of meaningful dialog and just speaks with a weird voice and laughs unusually.  I think he tried as hard as he could, but again, there wasn't much there.

The most inspired thing is Josh Brolin's portrayal as the young version of Agent K.  He does a spot-on impression of Tommy Lee Jones (who's also barely in the film, as if he didn't really want to be there).  The impression is so good that the first time I heard him do TLJ's voice, I thought it was a dub, rather than impression.  You really do start to forget that you're watching an actor do an impression and somehow are  looking at a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones.

Another thing I thought was really interesting was the character of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an important alien that has the ability to see the outcome of multiple timelines simultaneously.  It's a cool concept and they use it well.  He isn't introduced until almost the end of the film though, so again, it felt like something that was underused.  Bill Hader, as Andy Warhol, was also one of the funnier things about the film.

There are a lot of weird or inconsistent things in the movie.  At one point during a fight, a metal door comes off the hinges for no reason at all. You see an alien die only to the same alien alive in the very next scene.  There a bystander screaming during the same fight, only to be one of the people the MiB are fighting against.  Why are you screaming like you're helpless, but then attack later on when you lost your tactical advantage?  There are a few things during the climax that aren't consistent either.  You'll notice moments where the bad guy would win if would do something simple, but that's 'bad guy movie logic' for you.  Some of these flaws you don't really notice until after the fact, where others are totally obvious as they are happening.

Barry Sonnenfeld did a good job keeping the tone of the film light and mostly fun.  It doesn't fully capture what made the first MiB great though.  The script by Etan Cohen (Idiocracy, Tropic Thunder) is an improvement over MiB 2, but many of the jokes fall flat.  I'm surprised at all the missed opportunities here.  As mentioned earlier, you think you're going to get more character development, but it never happens.  There's a moment at the end that's thrown in to give the climax some emotional weight, but it felt forced in.

The strongest elements of the film are the overall look of the film and the effects.  The alien and creature design was excellent, but that's to be expected whenever the legend, Rick Baker, is involved.  I didn't bother to see this in 3D for a change, and I didn't feel like I missed anything.  It is a very nice looking and colorful film though.

Overall, MiB 3 is a enjoyable enough addition to the series, but as I've mentioned a few times, it seemed like there was a lot of wasted potential.  If you're a die-hard fan of the series, I think there's a lot you'll enjoy about MiB 3.  For those of you that are dying to see this or are all caught up on your movies, it's worth a matinee.  Otherwise, I'd save it for a rental.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars