Review: After Earth (2013)

If anyone knows why I do it, they should let me know right now.  Why do I continue to watch movies put together by M. Night Shyamalan, knowing that they will only leave me at the best disappointed and at the worst wanting to tear my own eyes out?  There may be no answer to that question, other than some deep-seated need for self-torture, but continue this pattern I do, this week with After Earth.  And while it’s pretty bad overall, I would actually say that this one was more enjoyable to watch than almost anything else he’s done since Unbreakable.

The story follows the two Smiths - Will Smith as cold-blooded Cypher Raige (yes, that’s the actual name they use) and the talentless Jaden Smith as his son, Kitai Raige.  The father and son relationship isn’t going well, so daddy decides to take his kid on a field trip, transporting a dangerous alien across space (parenting at its best).  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the fact that the movie is set in a future where blind, fear-smelling aliens are trying to kill humanity and that everyone moved away from Earth about a thousand years ago because it was falling apart.

Anyways, off the Smiths go.  Of course, there’s a complication (how else would there be any story?).  The ship gets messed up in an asteroid field due to a “million-to-one” accident.  They are forced to jump across the galaxy blindly and just happen to end up next to old Earth.  The planet is quarantined, a dangerous place where everything has evolved to kill and even the air is poison, but they’ve got to land somewhere, right?  Unfortunately, the ship breaks apart and everyone dies except for the Smiths (star power ftw!).  When their panic beacon turns up broken, little Smith has to head out to the other half of the ship to find a hopefully working one.  Big Smith stays back and watches because his legs are busted.

There begins the journey of little Smith, a painful-to-watch stumbling through an overgrown Earth filled with nasty creatures.  Well, all except for the giant eagle that tries to kill him at first but then ends up saving his life later because of… magic eagle friendship powers?  I dunno, I gave up trying to figure that one out.  As little Smith travels, he encounters plenty of deus ex machina and amazingly close calls and in the end (naturally) everything turns out for the best.  Except for his acting career maybe.  Then again, big Smith can probably get the kid as many acting gigs as he wants, being all famous and stuff.

I have to say, for the first 30 minutes of this movie I was really interested.  I liked what they did with all the tech design, I liked the back-story (even if it was rushed through) and I even liked the concept behind big Smith’s emotionless character.  Once the space ship blows up, however, it all went downhill.  Little Smith’s acting was positively painful to watch (M. Night seems to have a certain skill for finding talentless young actors), the plausibility went straight out the window and the script used every cliffhanger cliché it could recycle.  And while I wouldn’t rate it as bad as the 11% that the critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave it, I would tend to agree with the audience assessment of 38%.

The only thing I can say about this movie is that at least it wasn’t The Last Airbender <cringe>.  If you want an almost-good M. Night flick to watch, then give it a try.  Otherwise, just stick to better sci-fi.

Photo Credits -           

After Earth courtesy of collider.com