- Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Release Date: Dec 12, 2008
- Critic Score
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70This contemporary remake of the science-fiction classic knew what it was doing when it cast Keanu Reeves, the movies' greatest stone face since Buster Keaton.
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67The one unforgivable crime committed in this remake is the lack of the original's most famous line of dialogue: "Klaatu barada nikto." Would it have been so tough to squeeze that in somewhere?
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67Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.
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63Just because the new The Day the Earth Stood Still is green, though, doesn't mean it's dull. If anything, there's a lot more mayhem and destruction this time around.
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63An entertaining rethink of the 1951 classic.
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63Passed my popcorn-movie test. Using the vast, expensive technology of a big studio production, it roused enough cheap energy to drive me to eat a bag of popcorn fit for a circus animal and wash it down with a quart of Diet Coke.
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63I can't explain the film's main problem without giving plot points away; suffice to say that, after decades of watching Earth, Klaatu's team of observers has missed a crucial event you and I witness every day. I can tell you about the secondary problem, though: too much money.
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60A remake that does not disgrace the original, this is sufficiently different to stand alone and just as relevant in its concerns – as well as succeeding (arguably better) as a thriller. And after this performance, are we sure that Keanu Reeves is really human?
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58Like the big shiny sphere at its center, the film is fairly pretty, but there's no real sense that there's anything inside it.
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58For most of the way this ecofriendly fantasy is pleasantly clunky, and Reeves, whose expressive range here is slim to none, is perfectly cast as the alien.
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50Despite the best efforts of stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, this new "Day" is tired and corny.
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50All this is presented in an expensive, good-looking film that is well-made by Scott Derrickson, but to no avail.
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50Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, confining his usual two-and-a-half-note vocal range to half that.
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50One of the big problems here is that, despite much exposition, the nature of Klaatu's mission on Earth isn't at all clear.
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50Pretty good as science fiction thrillers go, but sadly, there isn't much more to say about it.
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50The story, an updated version of the 1951 classic about a portentous extraterrestrial visit, feels musty and derivative, and not only because it's a remake.
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50Something has been lost in the translation, and it's not just the script.
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50It lacks the simple elegance and intelligence of the earlier film, and employs special effects and pointless action scenes to replace passages of dialogue.
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50As a message movie, it's preachy without being serious; for an action movie, there's a lot of racket but not much fun.
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50A 'so-so' movie. It's not particularly good, but it's competent and more or less successful in its goals.
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The problem here is that there are no big ideas.
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50Although the new version, which stars Keanu Reeves, is likely to make audiences pine for the meta-irony of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," it's not a complete failure.
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50The opening stretch, when the visitor arrives on earth and blithely dresses down mankind, is great fun. But screenwriter David Scarpi has drained away much of the sentiment.
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42The original Day the Earth Stood Still had a paranoid poetry that lifted the audience up even as it warned the world to come together. This one is so dour it just comes off as a scolding.
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40The film's major action sequences are never exciting, and even the now-requisite destruction of New York feels lazy.
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40Any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And The Day the Earth Stood Still could be worse.
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40This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.
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30Dunno about the Earth, but time certainly stands still for a goodly portion of Scott Derrickson's expensively produced but utterly boneheaded remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.
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30Klaatu is a dream role for the beautifully blank Reeves, since he doesn't even have to pretend to emote.
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25How can this movie not be fun?
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20Dull, unnecessary film.
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20A jumble of spare parts and leftover dialogue, as if it had been assembled out of unused bits of every movie where an unknown whatzit threatens our way of life and the government goes into full institutional pants-crapping panic mode.
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10Suffice it to say that these morons have, quite simply, turned The Day the Earth Stood Still on its head and what's falling out of its pockets in that upended state is a stream of junk.
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10What's never explained is why anyone would do such a dumb remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 31 out of 99
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Mixed: 18 out of 99
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Negative: 50 out of 99
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PeterJ5Ok to watch once, but not something I'd ever watch a second time. Never saw the original, but still knew exactly where the movie was going.
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