This "Day" shouldn't have been repeated

Movie Review

Keanu Reeves, who was The One in "The Matrix," takes on another messianic role in Scott Derrickson's cluttered, pointless remake of Robert Wise's 1951 "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It's a part he might have played in his sleep, and he almost does.

Like most 21st century remakes, Derrickson's film has more special effects, less talk, more action and less story logic than the classic original. It also updates the material in occasionally clever ways, replacing one kind of world-threatening disaster with an equally potent substitute.

The first half-hour suggests that Derrickson and his screenwriter, David Scarpa, have found a valid way of reimagining the story, starting with a prologue set in India in 1928. Scarpa has also discovered an intriguingly different way of introducing the central characters, but once they're established they just tend to stand around looking frightened or mysterious.

Jon Hamm, the charismatic star of AMC's "Mad Men," plays a character so poorly defined that he seems to have been written out of the movie while it was shooting. He has some kind of connection to Jennifer Connelly, in the old Patricia Neal role as a woman who sympathizes with Klaatu, the alien visitor played by Reeves.

Jaden Smith has the nearly unplayable role of her hostile stepson. John Cleese looks befuddled as an Einstein-like scientist who uses mathematics to communicate with Klaatu. Kathy Bates turns up as a foul-tempered Defense Secretary who might as well be labeled Government Obstructionist.

Derrickson, who directed the creepy thriller "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," fails to get them to operate as an ensemble. When Klaatu and his giant robot, Gort, threaten the Earthlings, it's the loud sound effects and choppy editing that make you edgy — not any real concern about what will happen to them. Originally 7 feet tall, Gort is now as high as a skyscraper, yet he's much less compelling.

One of the most intelligent and well-cast science-fiction films of its era, Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" took direct aim at the nuclear-arms race, blaming mankind for the international threat that followed Hiroshima.

Klaatu threatened the planet's obliteration if we didn't clean up our destructive section of the cosmic neighborhood. Taking the earthly name of Mr. Carpenter, he was shot, killed and resurrected, just in time to deliver his threat, which was also an invitation to join peacemaking civilizations.

Wise and his producer, Julian Blaustein, claimed they never thought of the film as a Christ allegory, but the screenwriter, Edmund H. North, later admitted that he had intended exactly that. "My private little joke," he called it, though he hoped the effect would be subliminal.

Casting Reeves as Klaatu (replacing the wonderfully eerie Michael Rennie in the original) may also have been a joke, just not quite as private. Reeves has become so inscrutable he's funny, especially when the script requires that Klaatu go through a change of mind. This leads to a series of scenes so sappy and awkward that no one seems to believe what they're saying. The movie stumbles to an ending that's more whimper than bang.

If you didn't grow up with Wise's film, you may know it from the opening line in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" ("Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still ... "), which has kicked off so many midnight-movie parties. Both movies will outlast this sorry rehash.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com