After Earth: After Earth what? Nothing!

After Earth

Starring : Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Sophie Okonedo
Rated: 3/10
It would be unwarranted indulgence towards M Night Shyamalan to suggest that he should have had the sixth sense to not make After Earth. The direct, more candid suggestion would be to ask where the heck did his common sense vanish while he was attempting to mount the most inane, stuck-up spatial sci-fi in a long-long while.
After Earth fails to show pretty much anything that makes for a sustainable film — its emotions are wrongly undertoned, action is missing in action, adventure is as flat as Katirna Kaif’s stomach (without the same allure of course) and its pace seems to have been heavily drugged to unexplained paralysis — like the one the otherwise happening Will Smith suffers in most of the movie.
As he gets hurt in a crash-landing on demonised, uninhabitable Earth where killer fauna rule the domain, he also keeps drugging himself to escape the manual bypass he does on her broken leg. Why Shyamalan would make even this look like bored stupor from the movie escapes all explanations — sane or otherwise. And then to debut his son Jaden Smith in such a commanding role in such a messy, unhappening movie could be the dad and lad’s biggest career mistake.
Shyamalan, in short, needs to stick to ghosts — spirits who visit your homes and minds and emotions in simple human movies. That’s his wonder. This one is his blunder.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, June 9, 2013

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