After Earth:
Take an Oscar-winning actor, add the director of one of the greatest films of all time, and give them a budget. The end result should be a movie that is at least respectable in some regards.
In this case, it was not.
Of course, the Oscar winner was Will Smith (who has never really been a particularly good actor) and the director was Shyamalan (who has never been a particularly good director). But still, the parts should have made a better movie. This was just... bad.
The badness starts with Jaden Smith, who deserves to be blacklisted for his atrocious accent work. Tommy Wiseau could coach him on sounding like a real human. For a kid whose acting career began around the time he was born, that's really, really bad.
His bad accent seems to affect anyone with whom he comes into contact, most notably his dad-- the elder Smith speaks around two lines normally, then sounds drunk for the rest of the movie. I will stop myself from speculating as to why Will sounds drunk.
The plot focuses on the world's lamest looking spaceship crashing into Earth. Naturally, the only to survivors were Jaden (the only character who thought it prudent to buckle his seatbelt while the vessel was in freefall) and Will, who was not sucked out of an opening in the plane because he... well... because he forgot to die, I guess. Since Will Smith's legs were broken (one in the crash, the other decided to become the first limb to suffer from Munchausen's) Jaden has to do all the work (which is either fix the plane or kill the random killer alien they had on board). Of course, since they're family (a dynamic which was not well portrayed by the actors, mind you), Jaden also is dealing with trying to gain his father's love or trying to get a job at his father's workplace. His motives are unclear.
Will Smith, meanwhile, is trying to set the galactic record for longest survival time with a severed femoral artery and no real medical attention. At one point, it was implied by a machine that a shunt should be attempted. I don't believe he took the machine's advice.
Jaden proceeds to become the whiniest, lamest protagonist ever to grace cinema. The cop who repeatedly abused his amnesiac wife to solve a case in Night Killer (lichess.org/forum/team-team-clousems/clousems-film-reviews-mk-iii?page=3#28) was more likeable than this wuss. If you think I'm exaggerating, here's a play-by-play of his adventures:
- Screams like a little girl because a spider touches him
- Throws a rock at a baboon
- Runs away from the surprisingly lethargic baboon horde
- Nearly gets killed by a leech
- Whines a lot
- Lies to his dad about ho much oxygen he has (PS: When did baboons evolve to live without oxygen? Aren't they pretty much the same in terms of survival considerations as humans?)
- Whines
- Lies again
- Gets caught lying
- Gets kidnapped by a condor
- Lets a pack of tigers kill all of the baby birds before killing the equally wussy tigers in self defense
- Falls asleep on a raft, until Zoe Kravitz* (whose character has died before the film began, and is otherwise only shown in flashbacks) tells him to wake up so as not to run out of oxygen (Deus ex Machina #1)
- Starts to freeze to death
- Gets saved by the condor, who itself dies (Deus ex Machina #2)
- Finds oxygen (Deus ex Machina #3)
- Kills the alien, who turns out to be completely blind.
Then they just get saved. Not sure how they survive with no supplies, oxygen, and Will Smith's femoral injury, but they do.
It's a very bad movie. Do not watch.
*Perhaps her scenes were limited because the producers wanted to stop anyone from remembering that her family is the more talented version of the Smith family.
Take an Oscar-winning actor, add the director of one of the greatest films of all time, and give them a budget. The end result should be a movie that is at least respectable in some regards.
In this case, it was not.
Of course, the Oscar winner was Will Smith (who has never really been a particularly good actor) and the director was Shyamalan (who has never been a particularly good director). But still, the parts should have made a better movie. This was just... bad.
The badness starts with Jaden Smith, who deserves to be blacklisted for his atrocious accent work. Tommy Wiseau could coach him on sounding like a real human. For a kid whose acting career began around the time he was born, that's really, really bad.
His bad accent seems to affect anyone with whom he comes into contact, most notably his dad-- the elder Smith speaks around two lines normally, then sounds drunk for the rest of the movie. I will stop myself from speculating as to why Will sounds drunk.
The plot focuses on the world's lamest looking spaceship crashing into Earth. Naturally, the only to survivors were Jaden (the only character who thought it prudent to buckle his seatbelt while the vessel was in freefall) and Will, who was not sucked out of an opening in the plane because he... well... because he forgot to die, I guess. Since Will Smith's legs were broken (one in the crash, the other decided to become the first limb to suffer from Munchausen's) Jaden has to do all the work (which is either fix the plane or kill the random killer alien they had on board). Of course, since they're family (a dynamic which was not well portrayed by the actors, mind you), Jaden also is dealing with trying to gain his father's love or trying to get a job at his father's workplace. His motives are unclear.
Will Smith, meanwhile, is trying to set the galactic record for longest survival time with a severed femoral artery and no real medical attention. At one point, it was implied by a machine that a shunt should be attempted. I don't believe he took the machine's advice.
Jaden proceeds to become the whiniest, lamest protagonist ever to grace cinema. The cop who repeatedly abused his amnesiac wife to solve a case in Night Killer (lichess.org/forum/team-team-clousems/clousems-film-reviews-mk-iii?page=3#28) was more likeable than this wuss. If you think I'm exaggerating, here's a play-by-play of his adventures:
- Screams like a little girl because a spider touches him
- Throws a rock at a baboon
- Runs away from the surprisingly lethargic baboon horde
- Nearly gets killed by a leech
- Whines a lot
- Lies to his dad about ho much oxygen he has (PS: When did baboons evolve to live without oxygen? Aren't they pretty much the same in terms of survival considerations as humans?)
- Whines
- Lies again
- Gets caught lying
- Gets kidnapped by a condor
- Lets a pack of tigers kill all of the baby birds before killing the equally wussy tigers in self defense
- Falls asleep on a raft, until Zoe Kravitz* (whose character has died before the film began, and is otherwise only shown in flashbacks) tells him to wake up so as not to run out of oxygen (Deus ex Machina #1)
- Starts to freeze to death
- Gets saved by the condor, who itself dies (Deus ex Machina #2)
- Finds oxygen (Deus ex Machina #3)
- Kills the alien, who turns out to be completely blind.
Then they just get saved. Not sure how they survive with no supplies, oxygen, and Will Smith's femoral injury, but they do.
It's a very bad movie. Do not watch.
*Perhaps her scenes were limited because the producers wanted to stop anyone from remembering that her family is the more talented version of the Smith family.