After Earth

Ah, there hasn’t been an opportunity to bash M. Night Shyamalan for a few years so the old chap has been back to well of mediocrity and emerged with After Earth. Though star Will Smith is as much to blame for anyone for this mess, what with him having a hand in the script, production, direction and the casting. Ah yes, the casting. I’ll come on to that shortly. Set 1000 years hence, the storyline has a military father (Smith) and his son Cypher (Jaden Smith) crash land on the now abandoned Earth (so, being pedantic, not actually after Earth at all then), where Cypher has to battle through the hostile terrain in order to do something or other (I can’t remember anymore) in order to help save his injured and dying father. It sounds mildly entertaining, but the execution is dull and the script clichéd throughout. Many brickbats have come Smith’s way for casting his own son in what is basically the lead role, but the nepotism thing doesn’t bother me too much as it happens all the time (see Apatow / Mann, Burton / Bonham-Carter, Sheen / Estevez and so on). However, the difference between those examples and this, is that those people are talented. Jaden Smith can’t act to save his own life, let alone that of his father’s in a film. Stuck with a facial range of either “constipated” or “not constipated”, every time he appears on screen his performance is so wooden it’s like an impromptu carpentry lesson has broken out. Smith Snr and M. Night need to carry the can for this snooze fest, though you’d have to squint hard to discover that this is actually a Shyamalan production at all as Sony Pictures marketing campaign swept him under the carpet (for obvious reasons). So he’s not totally to blame here, but this does nothing to suggest Shyamalan will ever get back to the dizzy heights of his earlier work. Some impressive special effects in respect of the sharpness of the images aside, this is a vanity project that should never have made it beyond the pitching stage. Rating: 3/10.