Let's begin with the director, M. Night Shyamalan. He began with successful hits such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. Then he decided to go a bit over-the-top with his odd vision on various topics with The Village, The Happening and the dreadful Lady In The Water. Then his most recent addition was the apparent ultimate stinker, The Last Airbender, which I thankfully have not seen yet and probably never will.
After Earth keeps the trend of Shyamalan's recent works, it's odd, you can see what he is trying to do, but a lot of it just does not work. When I picked this film, it was mainly because of Will Smith, because he is a regularly solid actor who comes with an enjoyable film that gets big box-office figures. Even with his annoying son Jaden co-starring, I was confident the Fresh Prince would save the day. Sadly, Shyamalan casted him to be a boring fearless general. In only a couple of scenes, you could see Will was trying to give his usual element of comedy, but it was not enough to redeem himself. To be fair, he did what he was supposed to do, be fearless and look bored. But it is not going to give him a good image and this is not going to suck you in and you feel the emotions within the film. Despite this being a Will Smith film, you don't see a lot of him. It's all about Jaden. God help us all.
Thankfully, Jaden was not as annoying as he has been. But he still can't act. You can tell he was trying his utmost, but I'm sorry, it's time to go your own way and not tag along with your much cooler Dad.
Amazingly, that's not the worst bit of the film. The story was very predictable and a lot of the build-up was just so pointless. I think Shyamalan just had a small idea and struggled to expand on it. The dialogue is George Lucas quality, and just in case you don't know, that's a very bad thing. Pacing was slow and a lot of scenes are quite boring. Like I said, there is a lot of promise in this story. I was urging Shyamalan to make the most of the plot, but he decided to slowly drag it through the very thick mud.
Thankfully, there are some plus points. Shyamalan usually comes out with a good soundtrack, and delivers another cracker. The visual effects were solid, but it was odd seeing a heavy amount of CGI in a Shyamalan film. Some of the gadgets he had were interesting, but not ground-breaking as you have seen them in previous Sci-Fi's.
Overall, it is nothing new for the Sci-Fi genre. After a promising beginning to his career, M. Night Shayamalan is going down at an agonizingly slow pace. Either make another cult classic, or leave the film business. He's done too many films that are so close to being good, but he continues to come up short or just ruin it completely.
Rating: 6/10
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