Movie Review - After Earth

After Earth (2013)

Starring Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Zoë Kravitz, and Sophie Okonedo

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

While not quite the debacle I was expecting, After Earth is a dismal, depressing flick with nothing positive to note.  Father-son duo Will and Jaden Smith star as father-son duo Cypher and Kitai Raige who crash land on Earth centuries after the planet was deemed inhabitable.  Dad Cypher is immobilized during the crash and unable to walk, so he sends son Kitai out into the unknown landscape in order to find the tail end of their spacecraft which contains a beacon that can be used to send for help.  Along the way, Kitai is forced to face an environment that has adapted to kill humans while additionally having to do battle with an alien creature that was being carried on the afflicted spacecraft that just so happens to be able to smell fear.

As Kitai is out in the wild, he's in constant communication with his father who, thanks to conveniently innovative technology, is able to see everything going on in the environment around his son.  A pack of wild monkeys are coming Kitai's way?  No worries because Dad knows about it first.  A giant hawk is coming to attack Kitai?  We've got that taken care of.  All the while, we get to hear Papa Smith spout eloquent theology like, "Fear is not real.  It's a product of our imagination.  Danger is very real, but fear is a choice," in the most monotone voice caught on film in 2013.  With nary a modicum of emotion emanating from Will, it's obvious why Kitai wants to break away from his father.

While Will Smith is an emotional vacuum, Jaden doesn't have the charisma to carry the film.  Tackling some weird undecipherable accent, Jaden shouldn't have necessarily earned the Worst Actor Razzie Award, but any attempts by the Smith family to make their son a star should probably be quashed sooner rather than later.  Then again, maybe it's just the role as co-scripted by M. Night Shyamalan whose involvement with this was unceremoniously kept hidden in all ads after his recent directorial foibles.  After the one-two-three punch of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, Shyamalan has utterly ruined his reputation and After Earth (despite direction that isn't horrible...faint praise, I know) won't help to redeem that in the slightest.

The RyMickey Rating:  D