After Earth falls flat

After Earth
DIRECTED BY: M Might Shyamalan
STARRING: Will
Smith, Jaden Smith,
Isabelle Fuhrman
CERT: 12A

After Earth is based on a story idea by its main man, Will Smith, an idea perhaps conceived in the hope that this would be the one – the movie that would mark Mr Smith’s triumphant return to the top of the hill. It’s been a while since he was king of the box office.
I suppose it might have happened, had the project fallen into the right hands. Unfortunately for the now Not-So-Fresh Prince,
it fell into the hands of M Night Shyamalan, the Hollywood equivalent of Wayne Rooney or Fernando Torres – a man who once
dazzled the world with an immense talent, but is now a mere shadow of his former
self.
Like his football counterparts, Shyamalan is still capable of the odd genius moment and to his credit, After Earth is an improvement on, say, The Last Airbender, but it’s a long way from the top of the mountain and the days when he made films like The Sixth Sense.
The story is set a couple of centuries from now, which means the Earth is banjaxed on account of its delinquent inhabitants.
The human population has abandoned the place and moved to a moon called Nova Prime. This new home is disputed territory, however. An alien species had claim to it first and they got so mad at the invaders, they created fearsome predators, bred for the sole purpose of slaughtering humans. These guys are called ursas and they hunt their prey by smelling fear.
Will Smith, meanwhile, plays General Cypher Raige, a man who feels no fear. Raige is a legend in the Ranger Corps and his son Kitai (Jaden Smith) is hoping to follow in his footsteps. But Kitai just doesn’t seem to have the right stuff. He’s been rejected by the Rangers, on account of being a tad emotionally delicate. This may have something to do with how he saw his sister being mangled by an alien monster. That kind of thing could leave you a bit fragile.
The general and his son are not particularly close and the young lad’s failure doesn’t go down too well. But after a bit of the old wifely persuasion, Raige agrees to take the boy on a mission because, in the future, bonding still solves all problems.
Or not.
While out for their father-son cruise, the ship gets damaged in a meteor shower and crash-lands on Earth. Raige and Kitai survive. So does the captive ursa they were transporting and now the beast has vanished into the wilds. If the lads don’t get help soon, they will die at the hands of the old foe – or by one of a bazillion other gruesome means. Earth has become a somewhat hostile environment for its previous owners.
Their only hope is to retrieve the space ship’s distress beacon but there’s a couple of snags there. The beacon came down with the back end of the ship, about a hundred kilometres away and Raige can’t go traipsing after it, on account of his broken legs. The boy will have to go it alone.
Fair dues to Smith, it’s a grand idea for a sci-fi adventure, whether or not – as has been suggested – it’s been influenced by the teachings of Scientology. In any case, it had the makings of a fine yarn.
As we know, however, Mr Shyamalan has lost his magic touch and his co-writer Gary Whitta (The Walking Dead, The Book of Eli) hasn’t contributed much of his own. It’s not that their work is terribly bad – it’s just bland. The characters are vanilla, the dialogue lazy and the many action scenes are just, well, run-of-the mill action scenes that don’t look particularly impressive.
There’s nothing much that excites or dazzles, nothing that sticks in the memory.
If Shyamalan is the Hollywood Rooney, then watching After Earth is a bit like watching Fulham. It’s all just very ordinary.
In a sense, Smith and son can only play with what they’ve got, but still and all their performances are disappointingly flat. In their previous collaboration, The Pursuit of happyness, the pair had a strong and very touching on-screen chemistry. But young Jaden just doesn’t have the spark here and his father looks like an actor on auto-pilot, his default setting for way too long now.
For Smith and Shyamalan, the search for the grail continues.