"After Earth" Review

For director M. Night Shyamalan, gone are the days of small children with six senses.

Gone are the days of unbreakable men.

And gone are the days of God-fearing, extraterrestrial-fighting farmers.

Since Signs came out in 2002, Shyamalan has struggled to repeat his early success. He's consistently manufactured a series of duds between 2004's The Village and 2010's The Last Airbender. In 2013, Shyamalan brings us yet another sci-fi story; this time an original one conceptualized by actor Will Smith.

After Earth tells the story of young Kitai Raige (Will's son, Jaden Smith), a boy trying to find his place within the ranks of his father's military outfit on an off-planet colony some one-thousand years in the future. In those one-thousand years, Earth has become uninhabitable due to pollution, global warming, and the evolution of wildlife. In an effort to become less of a commanding officer and more of a father figure to his son, Kitai's father Cypher (Will Smith) brings his boy on a mission that sees their ship crash-land on Earth. With his father gravely injured from the wreck, Kitai embarks on a dangerous mission across the wilderness to signal for help.

Once you understand the plot and characters its easy to see that Smith just created an excuse to do a sci-fi movie with his son. But the goal appears to be to give Jaden the spotlight in an effort to crown a new "Fresh Prince", if you will. Too bad the 14-year-old doesn't quite have the acting chops yet to pull it off.

Jaden's performance as Kitai feels as if he got picked to read in English class and is trying to put whatever flair he can into the text to make it sound appealing. It's like he's reading the script verbatim in some ridiculous accent, and the final product is barely passable for acting in a high-school play. Jaden is great in movies like The Pursuit of Happyness and The Karate Kid because he's believable in his little-kid roles. After Earth is his first foray into carrying a mature feature, and I'm sorry to say that at 14, Jaden isn't there yet. But give him a few more years and a couple more pointers from Dad, and the kid will be a superstar.

As for Papa Smith, he's rock-solid as always in the role of Cypher Raige, Kitai's militaristic father. It's not a particularly demanding part, considering Smith spends almost the entire movie half-dead and confined to his seat in the crashed vessel's cockpit. Will never cracks a smile and shows us his range from stoically comical to tear-jerkingly dramatic, all while maintaining his character's iron resolve and absurd accent. The older Smith is the best thing After Earth has going for it.

The screenplay from Shyamalan and Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) is unimpressive. The plot is straightforward with no twists to speak of and takes a long time to get going. Aside from one or two action sequences with Kitai in the wilderness, there's nothing of merit here. After Earth could have been the next Life of Pi, but the sense of wonder isn't there, nor is there any true character evolution on a spiritual scale. This is just a bland, baseline excuse to adapt Will Smith's father-son sci-fi tale for the big screen.

And being a sci-fi tale set on an abandoned planet one-thousand years in the future, you'd expect some decent CGI. But there's none to be found in After Earth. All the animals look cartoony and fake. Not to mention whatever off-planet settlement the characters start at bears a striking resemblance to the Grand Canyon with slipshod cartoon structures built in and above it. This movie would've been at the height of digital effects technology if it had been made in 2006.

All that being said, it's clear that M. Night Shyamalan has not yet found a way to repeat the critical and commercial success he once had with movies like Signs and The Sixth Sense. After Earth features a solid performance from Will Smith and a couple of decent action scenes, but dated CGI, a drearily slow plot and an unworthy performance from Jaden Smith cause the film to fall short.

4.5/10