Awful AFTER EARTH Is More Will Smith's Bad Than M. Night Shyamalan's

Opening
today at nearly every multiplex in America:

AFTER EARTH (Dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2013)

“Together
we will survive.” Will Smith, as some sort of intergalactic General, declares this to his son Kitai, played by his real son Jaden, after their spaceship has
crash landed on a hostile abandoned Earth, 1000 years in the future in M. Night
Shyamalan’s newest.

Thing
is, these could be the real-life words of Smith re-assuring his offspring that
he can carry a summer sci-fi action vehicle of his own, but, don’t worry, Daddy
will be there on the sidelines to talk him through it. You see, Smith’s
character broke his legs in the crash, and he’s determined not to smile, make a
wisecrack, or do anything that would draw attention away from his kid’s
screen-time.



Jaden looks worried and overwhelmed at this prospect, and he should be as he’s far from a polished actor, but his father, who had the story idea (writer/game designer Gary Whitta and Shyamalan fleshed it out somewhat into a screenplay), surely talked him into it with the selling points that sci-fi and the start of the summer movie season have paid off for their family many times in the past.



Well, in this tedious tale decorated by unspectacular CGI (I’ve seen episodes of Battlestar Galactica from five years ago that had more impressive special effects – hard to believe this reportedly cost $150 million), nothing pays off as nothing interesting happens at all.



Jaden is haunted by memories of his sister (Zoe Kravitz) being killed by some monstrous alien beast, and now has to fend off all kinds of crazy creatures (“everything has evolved to kill humans,” Smith explains) as he makes his way to retrieve a beacon in the far-off wreckage of their ship so they can return home to Nova Prime (the planet Earthlings relocated to).



To make the trip, Jaden needs a supply of inhalers to help combat the poisonous air. This means time is of the essence, which doesn’t make sense that they would stop for a lengthy dramatic speech by Smith to his son through whatever they call Skype in the future. I mean, sure it was dark and rainy, but it seems like Jaden should’ve kept moving. Sure wish the movie did.



It all leads up to what’s supposed to be a big ass climatic battle with another alien beast (which again, is crafted from un-compelling CGI), in which Jaden finally heeds his father’s advice and conquers his fears. Yawn.



This family vanity project (it’s co-produced by Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, her younger brother Caleeb Pinkett, and Smith’s long-time business partner James Lassiter), recalls how Shyamalan based his much reviled flop LADY IN THE WATER on a bedtime story he told to his children.



These big budget acts of nepotism may boast their family’s morale, but they contribute nothing to the art of cinema, nor do they make for anything close to passable entertainment.



With its poorly acted protagonist, complete lack of narrative or thematic drive, and sluggish pacing, AFTER EARTH joins the string of failures that Shyamalan has produced for now over a decade. Even what used to be a sure thing, i.e. a Will Smith summer sci-fi project, couldn’t reverse the filmmaker’s downward spiral.



To be fair, the blame of how bland this movie is should rest more on Smith’s shoulders than Shyamalan’s. It’s Smith’s glorified bedtime story starring his son; M. Night is just laying in it.



More later...

MEN IN BLACK III: Meh

MEN IN BLACK III (Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld, 2012)

Despite a few good ideas - Josh Brolin cast as a young Tommy Lee Jones; a cameo by SNL’s Bill Hader as Andy Warhol – the third installment of the MEN IN BLACK series is exactly what I expected. Every joke and plot point of this series of CGI-saturated set-pieces is mechanically in place in this standard-issue sequel right off the formulaic franchise assembly-line.

It’s been 10 years since MiBII (and 15 years since MiB), and not much has changed.

Will Smith and partner Jones are still up to their top-secret agency’s alien neutral zone policing, only Rip Torn doesn’t return to play their boss Agent Z. Instead they’ve got Emma Thompson, severly underwritten as Agent O, who figures out that there’s been a fracture in the time-space continuum because Smith came to work craving chocolate milk (that’s right). This is after Smith wakes up in a world in which Jones has been dead for 40 years.

You see, when the evil intergalactic criminal Boris the Animal (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement) escaped from a Lunar prision (the film’s big opening scene), he traveled back in time to 1969 (via a time-jump device obtained in a pawn shop) and killed Jones, so Smith has got to go back to the past and save his gruff partner. Then they can save the world from, I dunno, alien jellyfish descending on the planet?

This is where Brolin comes in with a pitch-perfect impersonation of Jones. This central gimmick works well initially (Brolin does Jones so much better than he did Dubya), and helps carry the film from half-chuckle to half-chuckle.

Jones really made out well in this outting - he only has to appear in the beginning and end of the film, but still gets his name above the title while a young hot actor embodies his persona for the rest of the picture.

There are a lot of possibilities for larger-than-life laughs here, such as retro aliens a la late ‘60s sci-fi (think Star Trek and Lost in Space), Clement’s bickering with his younger dumber double, andMichael Stuhlberg (A SERIOUS MAN, Boardwalk Empire) as a quirky visionary alien, but as big as the spectacle gets (and with its Cape Canaveral climax it gets pretty big), the attempts at creating actual comedy are few and futile.

It feels as if the film is so slickly streamlined that any notion of inventive wit would only get in the way. A throwaway one-liner spoutin’ Smith kickin’ extraterrestrial ass is always a surefire summer movie-going audience pleasing scenario, so why mess with success?

Basically, MiBIII isn’t a great movie, but it’s a sturdy franchise entry.

More later...