Saturday 15 June 2013

Movie Review: After Earth

With all the hype around the much awaited return of the famous father-son duo plus a sci-fi movie filled me with
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
anticipation on whether the film would leave me astounded just like The Pursuit of Happyness. It let me down sourly.The story was really good(considering Will Smith himself wrote it), an amazing star cast (though it mainly consists of the Smiths..but who does't love them) but the direction was poor which was a major letdown to the audience.The movie starts abruptly, ends abruptly and the middle is really slow and hence leaving the viewers really frustrated.

The plot runs around the lines where the humans are living on another planet called the Nova Prime as Earth becomes inhabitable due to environmental cataclysm.The father-son duo accidentally crash land their ship on earth after being hit by an asteroid shower.The crash leaves Will Smith with two broken legs.So, he sends his son,Jaden Smith (boy, that must be a tough role to enact!!) in search of the beacon in order to send a signal back to Nova Prime. The flora and fauna of Earth are evolved to an extent where they pose a threat to human life. The movie then goes on to show how he has to fight these monstrous creatures and blah blah blah...These full on action scenes leaves me asking one simple yet important question :WHERE ARE THE GUNS???Throughout the movie ,I'm expecting laser guns and other powerful armory to pop out any moment.Sadly, I'm left disappointed with nothing other than good old hand to hand combat.

The movie has a few "over science-fictionalized" scenes which makes it really hard to take the movie seriously. All in all, the below-par direction was the major setback for this movie which otherwise would have been huge with the impressive cast, story line and a couple of special effects.

It's a one time watch unless you are a die-hard Will Smith or sci-fi fan.One thing that did leave me astounded after watching the movie was how young Will Smith still looked. The movie reminded me of his Men in Black days and leaves me in awe.I see a lot of potential in Jaden Smith who is definitely a promising actor and we can definitely hope to see him carve a career similar to his dad's.

My rating: 2/5

One of the best thing related to this movie was when Will & Jaden came on Graham Norton's show.


This video is hilarious and a must watch for The Fresh Prince of Bel Air fans.

This was a post written with inputs from John Cherumala. 

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