ViewGuide

Created Dec 21, 2008 02:59PM PST • Edited Dec 21, 2008 02:59PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Keanu becomes Klaatu in this reimagining/update of the fifties sci-fi classic, with many changes (both cultural and technological) making it relevant once more, and with as powerful a message as before.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Keanu Reeves finally gets the role he was born to play, and as such he’s the best thing about the acting in this film. Jennifer Connolly is the audience’s perspective, and as such should be sympathetic, yet her character’s ongoing subplot with her stepson (Will Smith’s son Jaden) is overplayed to the extent of annoyance. John Cleese, Kathy Bates and John Hamm offer strong support.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

   Keanu Reeves, often thought of as having the emotional power of a plank of wood, finally finds a role to match his strange, other-worldly visage. As an alien without emotion, he conveys a sense of unease and distrust through his vacant expressions, and as such this is probably one of his best performances – he barely seems to blink either!!

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

   Jennifer Connolly does what she needs to, being a strong heroine, sympathetic mother and put-upon widow as well as an ally to an alien. What detracts from her performance is her disadvantage in being in too few scenes without weeping to show off her weirdly huge eyes – we get it, she’s sad, but why drum it home?

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

   Kathy Bates plays an ambiguous Defence Secretary who cannot seem to decide whether to go with her hunches or follow orders, and as such the actress has a pretty nothing role to play. She does well with it though – you do think that this woman could easily be strong enough to control the armed forces of the United States!

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

   Will Smith’s son, Jaden, is actually pretty damn convincing as the precocious step-kid of Connolly’s character, a damaged child who cannot process death but is faced with it throughout the film’s length. John Hamm and Kyle Chandler play sympathetic and antagonistic sides of the government’s response to Klaatu’s arrival, and each do what they need to – their performances don’t give them much more of an option. John Cleese appears for about four minutes as a wise and important scientist – really, really weird for a Brit brought up on ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘Monty Python’.

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Scott Derrickson stakes a claim to be breakout director of 2008 with his direction here; amazing visuals, tight dialogue and an ominous soundtrack helping to back up his strengths.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

    Taking a major-budget sci-fi action film with a brain and making it work is a hard task – but Derrickson seems to have ably coped with it, presenting a film that manages to balance both insane action with thoughtful ideas. His concept that alien civilisations want us to stop harming the earth (or face the consequences) is eerily apt for the current position of global warming, and the film does not often find itself drifting into cheesy or strained scenes.

12. Play Good 3.0

    Much of this is your stock sci-fi rubbish – science babble mixed with some heavy statements. However, Klaatu’s eloquence with a language alien to him lends the film some interesting lines – most notably his ultimatum to Connolly’s Benson on the earth and its current predicament.

13. Music Barely OK 2.0

    Like the aliens the film presents, the soundtrack is at turns absent, disturbing and strangely unfamiliar – there were no big motifs and much of the music appears to be rather forgettable. This is a shame, as with a better soundtrack the tension could have been improved somewhat.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    Here is where the film, as so many nowadays, succeeds beyond expectations. The special effects on show are stupendously good – from the orb that swirls with energy that signals the alien arrival, through to the sentinel sent to guard it (and latterly this object’s amazing defence mechanism), the film is a sumptuous sight to behold if nothing else.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.3

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Fierce 2.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Fantasy 5.0

    Aliens. Enough said.

22. Circumstantial Fantasy 5.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0