Unnecessary corporate product, director Scott Derrickson’s wholly unmemorable remake of the beloved 1951 Sci-Fi classic misses on all fronts. (Though it does serve to represent a lot of what we won’t miss about our current Hollywood trends.*) While still the story of a ‘man’ from Outer Space come to warn Earthlings on the consequences of screwing up the planet (War, Pollution, Self-Destruction), it’s without wonder; philosophy; believable F/X working for rather than instead of plot; quotidian exploration of big city life by a stranger in a strange land; New-Age metal on a spaceship that has no seam (a simple, but wonderful detail in the original); nor the most thrillingly suspenseful PAUSE in film history. (Imagine anyone quoting lines from this remake seven & a half decades later) and you sure won’t find a cast to equal the one in 1951 or match Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking electronically enhanced music score instantly setting scene & tone. Keanu Reeves sounds right as Alien Cassandra, but he seems to have beamed up to play Mr. Spock. Or is it the man who fell to Earth? As the girl in the case (don’t be fooled by her role as expert scientist), Jennifer Connelly has zero chemistry with Reeves, though perhaps on purpose. At least you don’t want to slap her every time she comes on screen as you do with obnoxious step-son Jaden Smith. Yikes! Positive notes? Well, the film won’t wreck any feelings you hold for the original.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Naturally, the Robert Wise 1951 beauty, personal bests for Patricia Neal, Michael Rennie, Sam Jaffe and Gort.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Giving credit where credit is due. Here that's scipter David Scarpa whose most recent are NAPOLEON/’23 and GLADIATOR II/’24, both for Ridley Scott.
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