After Earth

If I consider my liking of a young Will Smith during his “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” days, my feelings for his son, Jaden are the complete opposite. He comes across in public as an entitled, half-talent, whose famous parents opened all his doors. Most of that is true, but I have to give credit where it’s due. He is pretty good in After Earth. The film follows a general (Will Smith) and his son (Jaden Smith) living in the future that’s full of man eating creatures. When their spaceship crash lands on the quarantined planet of Earth (apparently our pollution destroyed it), the injured father needs his son to travel across the hostile landscape to find a distress beacon.

Now I acknowledged that Jaden is better than I expected, but the plot is a multi-level video game of digitally rendered animals all out to kill the young lead. Will’s performance almost exclusively consists of sitting injured in a chair with an unnecessarily stern expression. He’s a war hero, so apparently that means he speaks in one-liners. “It has found you.” “Take a knee.” “Fea’ is a choice.” Notice I removed that R because apparently people in the future speak in some weird quasi-New Orleans accent. The digital effects in the film look pretty good, but the sheer amount of effects will give After Earth a short half-life. That is if it is remembered as anything other than that weird Will and Jaden Smith movie.

The story was conceived by Will Smith, but as director and co-screenwriter, the much-maligned M. Night Shyamalan will probably take a lot of the criticism for the film’s weaknesses. It’s pretty clear that Shyamalan was not in full control though because the story lacked his sense of mystery employed during his best (and worst) films. The theme of controlling your fear is jammed down the audience’s throats with aliens that are blind but “smell fear.” But after the initial eye-rolling moment when that phenomenon is described, it’s not such a terrible concept. The middle of the film proves to be the most entertaining with Jaden’s character losing contact with his grumpy poppa. Why Will decided that his character needed to lack any of the traits that have made him such a likeable movie star, I have no idea. By the time Jaden reaches the end of the journey, which, like I said earlier, is a glorified video game, his showdown with the biggest of the monsters is highly predictable. The movie is okay, but when Will Smith is a lead, we expect more. After Earth is just riddled with problems from the get go.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.