The Day The Earth Stood Still

This will perhaps turn out to be a film that is a sign of our times, what with the constant fear of environmental disaster and the seeking of salvation from utter devastation. Actually, considering its theme, the film actually turned out to be pretty good.

Of course, we'd have to deal with the funnies first. The aliens (actually alien), turned out to be pretty human. Keanu Reeves human. They're quite ignorant and reckless just like humans, but we'd probably deal with that in another post. Primarily, everyone cracked up the moment dear Reeves decided to speak mandarin, and managed to royally mangle it (they really should have stuck with English). Oh, and how America tried to deal with ultra advanced aliens in a Bush'esque manner, then wonder if we managed to scare them off.

Overall, it was an ID-style end of world film, with infinitely advanced (and this time invincible) aliens trying to destroy earth, with the inevitable heroic ending where the earth gets saved. While I loved the theme of salvation where humans begged for another chance to save themselves, I felt it was pandering to the overdone idea that humans need to save their own planet, yet not inspiring any real drastic actions to the effect. Then again, that's probably not the objective of such a film...

I'd say 7.5/10, primarily because of the cool animations and nice concept, but it really could've been a lot better without the mangled mandarin and overly human aliens.