After Earth

After Earth
(2013) [Trailer]
Director: M. Night Shyamalan [IMDB]

M. Night has been getting a lot of hate recently, but I still like the dude. I haven't seen Airbender (I'm scared) but I have sat through every one of his other films and I like them all... except The Happening. When I saw the trailer for After Earth, I thought there was potential there, let's see if Mr. Shyamalan has got his groove back.

Synopsis: Humans left earth thousands of years ago and have settled else where in the galaxy. Will Smith and his son Jaden are traveling through space and crash land on earth, but it's not the same awesome planet any more... we should have listened to all the environmentalist hippys.

After telling my wife I went to see this today, she said "Oh, I would have told you but it has been getting terrible reviews." I looked online, she was right, it has shit reviews everywhere... and this is going to be another one.

I'm playing, it's not as awful as it sounds, but it isn't great either. I felt the storyline was insanely predictable and it heads right where you think it will, which is odd for a Shyamalan film. In the beginning of the film we get this quick, lazily voiced over narration to help give us the set up for why and how the humans have exited the planet.... I think that could have been handled more creatively. Will Smith's kid just isn't there yet. He is pretty bad at times and other times he is serviceable. The special effects were OK, but there were a few scenes where you could obviously tell they were acting in front of a green screen.

The idea behind the film is a boy stepping into manhood and overcoming his fears. I thought After Earth conveyed that idea fairly well without being too offensive to my movie senses. Again, this isn't a great film, but I also didn't feel it was a total waste either.