I recently watched After Earth with my kids and I have some mixed feelings about it. I am a huge fan of Will Smith. I usually like just about anything he happens to be in. After Earth was no exception, for the most part. LIke I said, there were some mixed feelings. The premise of the movie was actually pretty cool. I liked the notion of abandoning the earth to its own fate only to have Will Smith crash land there a couple centuries later. Here are the rest of my thoughts on the movie.
The things I liked:
The futuristic society is actually what I liked most about the movie. They had really cool tech and some pretty awesome looking architecture. The society as a whole was brilliantly thought up. I loved the idea of being able to ghost and not feel any fear. The opening sequence of Will Smith really tearing into the aliens showed a lot of promise, as far as the rest of the movie went. The story of the movie definitely drew me in. It was engaging and kept my attention the whole time. The biggest thing that I liked about the movie, however, was the evolved forms of some very common animals. The flying snake was really cool. I liked the warped and mutated looking tigers and the whales with two blowholes (although I'm not sure what evolutionary quirk decided that it was necessary for them to have two of those). The giant bird was also very impressive. Especially the way it snagged Jaden Smith right out of the air. The last thing that I liked about the movie was the ending. The whole fight sequence between Jaden and the alien was very awesome to watch. That about sums up the likes I had for the movie. Moving on.
The things I didn't like:
The accents. They were horrible. They sounded so weird. I get that the creative vision might've required something like that but I think that overall, everyone just sound really freaking stupid. Everyone. I also didn't really like Jaden Smith for most of the movie. He came off as a somewhat prissy, overly terrified, cry-baby for most of it. It was the complete opposite of what I was expecting and I wasn't really fond of it. Again, I get where they were going with it and why he was portrayed that way, but again, it didn't come out too well in the finished product. In my opinion, anyways. It was actually irritating to listen to him whining about everything and acting so blown out of proportion scared. I also wasn't a big fan of Will Smith's character either. He was a little too distant. It made for a really crappy on screen father/son relationship. Also, it was annoying to watch too.
Overall, while I did end up liking the movie and thinking it was pretty good, I probably wouldn't watch it again. There were a lot of things that annoyed me. There were a lot of things that I think would've came out better if they'd made a few, minor tweaks. It wasn't bad, by any means, but it wasn't that great either.
Stars: Three out of Five.
It was okay.