'After Earth' finds its heroes battling against an awkward screenplay
'After Earth' is directed by M. Night Shyamalan and takes itself too seriously. 'After Earth' stars Will Smith as a fierce father and his real-life son Jaden as his cadet son.
'After Earth' is directed by M. Night Shyamalan and takes itself too seriously. 'After Earth' stars Will Smith as a fierce father and his real-life son Jaden as his cadet son.
Will Smith plays an interplanetary ranger in M. Night Shyamalan鈥檚 dreary 鈥淎fter Earth,鈥� which is set a thousand years in the future, although it all seemed too drearily present-day to me. The gimmick here is that Smith鈥檚 son is played by Jaden Smith, his actual son.
Smith鈥檚 ranger is a martinet ranger whose cadet son desperately wants to live up to his father鈥檚 impossibly high standards. He gets the chance when their spaceship crash-lands on the planet Earth, which humans were forced to evacuate a thousand years earlier due to a global cataclysm. The boy, in order to rescue his dad and himself 鈥� the vessel鈥檚 sole survivors 鈥� faces off against everything from neo-condors to gloppy monsters. (Not withstanding the movie's misleading ads, Jaden has far more screen time than Will.)
But his fiercest adversary is the screenplay. Replete with howlers, it had the audience I saw the film with in titters from very early on. Jaden Smith was a good little actor in 鈥淭he Pursuit of Happyness,鈥� in which he also costarred, to much better effect, with his father. Will Smith鈥檚 patriarch never cracks a smile. That鈥檚 how you know he鈥檚 serious. But it鈥檚 impossible to take this movie seriously, certainly not as seriously as it takes itself. Grade: C- (Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and some disturbing images.)