Movie Monday

I saw the original 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still this weekend. The black and white one where Patricia Neal discovers that Hugh Marlowe really is a schmuck and not marriage material.

Ok, I know there was more to it than that, but you almost always learn that the boyfriend is no-good in a certain type of science fiction movie.

This one is considered a classic. But if you tell your dog he’s beautiful often enough, even he’ll believe it.

Patricia Neal was pretty hammy in the scene where she goes to deliver Klaatu’s message to Gort. Running from Gort, falling over those folding chairs, breathlessly looking up at him in terror was more reminiscent of an impending rape scene than a “message to Garcia” one.

And talking about that message. She repeats it once in the taxi and then remembers it perfectly. That’s a gift, unless your first language is “outer space.” Note to me: when you join the army to fight the space invaders, don’t apply to the messenger corp.

But since I saw the original, I had to review the re-make which has joined that pantheon of movie wonders by getting roasted by the critics yet taking the weekend box-office.

Movie Trailer Movie Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still

This stuff, whatever it is, is going to be world-wide. We are told that there are spheres all over the world. That's never good.

You get an early shot of the Egyptian pyramids in the trailer and that’s always used to tell you this stuff is big. After all, those pyramids are one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Now, I don’t know their place in an Entertainment Weekly’s Survey so if they don’t come in as #1 maybe we have some wiggle room.

Apparently not. Keanu Reeves is saying (and he’s not human though he looks like one): If the human race dies, the earth survives. That is not good news for my species. Well, a matter of fact, not for any species. But we’re the only ones who can write this crap so we really matter.

And eureka comes for Kathy Bates when she asks him in the most monotone line delivery for an Oscar winning actress: Why have you come to our planet? Answer: Your planet?

Oh cripes, we’ve been renting all this time.

Then Armageddon begins. We get those typical macho, throw-away lines from the military: Hey, guys, let wipe this thing up, as they’re getting their collective asses kicked.

Planes fly. Explosion abound. CGIs reign.

The end doesn’t look good. Woman: You can stop it. Reeves: I don’t know.

There are times when you need more than an existential hero. But then the screen flashes: Nothing can prepare you. So, perhaps existential is the operative word here.

In the midst of the carnage, Reeves, in human form, reaches to the skies as Gort, in robot form reaches down to him. Well, at least, some life form may be saved.

And then it looks like a football stadium blows up and I know this is my movie. I bet the subliminal message is: Stop with the sports. Maybe that’s what aliens have been trying to tell us all along.

Everything turns whirlwind gray and the title appears.

What I Expect From The Trailer:
Well, I sort of know what to expect from the original movie. This one probably follows that plot with a lot more explosions.

There was the creepiness in the original which only good black and white can give you. Not that the original didn’t have its slow and hokey moments. This one has them also but without the slow.

I am beginning to realize that I can rate movies on the musical crescendos in the trailers. This one is filled with them. They used to say you could always tell a bad western if the beginning titles were accompanied by a song. (Not music but a singer.)

Crescendo music races the “savage breast.” It’s the heralder announcing what you are seeing/about to see rises beyond the mundane into the sphere of worthwhile.

I guess I should expect a lot of worthwhile stuff in this movie.