A mysterious object is hurtling towards earth, and is calculated to hit Manhattan, so the government gathers up the best scientists it can to figure out a way to divert this object that is due to hit in 70 some odd minutes and whisks them off to…. Manhattan, right where this object is due to hit.

After lowering GORT, (the 50′ tall masculine humanoid robot,) into a deep hole, (missile silo, I guess,) the attempt to drill into it, (for some reason,) is thwarted when it shatters a diamond drill bit. We’re told that another attempt can’t be made for days until the bit is “robotically” repaired. Alas, speed is of the essence after the Klaatu escapes, and so they send in a guy with… a handy spare diamond drill bit.

The utterly dispassionate Klaatu, determined that mankind must be wiped off the earth, kills a cop who is threatening him with a pistol by crushing him between two cars, flinging one into another just by touching the first, then rushes over and using magic gel and his fantastic alien abilities, revives the cop to full health.

Caught in the path of the raging metal super locusts that devour everything in their path, Klaatu hauls the lady scientist and her brat kid to safety under… a short four lane highway bridge. By his statement, he is apparently somehow able to keep the little buggers out of that area, but is unable to protect himself from attack in his final dash to his spaceship, (though they don’t swarm under that little bridge to eat up the idiotic scientist and her brat kid after he’s left them behind,) where his touch to the ship sends and EMP that shuts them all down, (as well as every machine on earth,) and he disappears.

The movie was a non-stop string of things that just made no sense like these throughout.

As near as I can tell, this screen play was written by a group of ecofreaks while totally roasted on pot because the story ran pretty much like trying to have a conversation with someone in that condition who thinks they’re being “deep” in their philosophizing.

Don’t buy it, (unless you want the 1951 original and can’t find it elsewhere,), don’t rent it, don’t purchase the PPV, but instead, if you truly can’t live without seeing it, wait for it to come out on regular cable. Otherwise you’ll be kicking yourself for wasting your money, no matter how little you might spend on it.

On the plus side, you will burn calories with the extensive eye rolling you’ll be doing throughout with all aspects, plot, acting, special effects, logical disconnects, music, etc.

The casting was absurd — Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense? Are you kidding me? So we get to look at her ugly and offensive personage in a role that she can obviously never fit. And the son of the woman was also miscast. So the viewer has to constantly contend with the miscastings while trying to suspend belief for the sake of trying to enjoy a story. This was a horribly disappointing movie for a fan of either science fiction or Keanu Reeves.

Warning, spoilers ahead!

In this remake (more like a re-imagining) of the venerable 50′s sci-fi classic, an alien character so wooden that he made me long for an Al Gore lecture arrives on Earth to tell the United Nations that we are all going to be irradicated so that the planet can be saved.

Why tell us at all then? Did this organization of alien civilizations just want us to know why we are all going to die before they kill us? No chance to change here; you threaten the planet and you’re dead! It’s obvious to me that these alien civilizations had already advanced thousands of years beyond us technology while preserving their own planets, so why not just give us a few clues and help us out a bit?

Nope, these aliens — who have already arrived in their technology advanced eco-utopias — just look at humanity as an object of contempt and decide they want us elimnated before another planet killing day goes by. They are supposedly our moral superiors, yet they would commit genocide without any qualms whatsoever.

Thankfully, the sleepwalking “Al Gore from space” sees the love of a mother for a child and decides to give us an alternative to annihilation (one I suppose he never would have thought of after observing humanity for seventy years). He decides we have to change our lifestyle. Never heard that one before!

Rather than being turned to dust, we get to lose all our electricity and machines. We get to go back to those wonderful times before the industrial revolution where the average life span was somewhere in the forties and half of all our children died as we were trying to raise them, and most of us worked from sun up ’till sundown on the farm. But at least the planet was safe!

This movie at least gives us a future with no more movies, and if all they’re going to be are propaganda pieces that take their names from the classics, it can’t be all that bad.

Buy why stop here? How about a reimagined Forbidden Planet where the Krell all died from global warming? How about a remiagined Metropolis where it’s not humanity that’s being exploited; it’s the planet! How about a movie where a group of super rich Hollywood elites make a movie that does nothing more but to fill us with hopelessness and self-loathing and presents the only solution as the roll back of civilization to the dark ages? This must be how rich liberals assuage their guilt.

So, two stars from me, but one is just for Jennifer Connelly, who reminds me of a time when all I wanted in life was to snag a really attractive and smart brunette.