1928, India.  Keanu Reeves, sporting a beard of Almost Human density, is sharpening his crampons when he sees a bright light over the horizon.  He climbs a vertical face to find a glowing sphere.  He brushes away some surface ice with his pick, causing the sphere to go mini-nova and knock him out.  He awakens to find the sphere gone and a scar on his hand.

In the present day, super scientist Jennifer Connelly is recruited along with a group of other experts in the sciences and engineering.  Her specialty is astro-biology which would seem to be pretty simple given that no biology has been discovered out in the astro.  Her friend Don Draper spots her in the crowd and fast-tracks her inside.

An object has been spotted speeding toward earth, Manhattan specifically.  And, oh yeah, it will be here in 78 minutes.  The group boards a helicopter and flies over New York City.  If this brain-trust is supposed to save humanity, I am unclear about how it makes sense to airlift them to ground zero where an object traveling 18,600 miles a second is going to impact.

Luckily, the object slows down before impact and lands in Central Park.  When the dust settles, it is revealed to be sphere like the one in 1928, only much larger.  A being emerges, and approaches Jennifer.  So the army shoots him.  The giant robot AL GORT then follows, knocking out all the electrical equipment and weapons.

The injured alien is revealed to be Keanu Reeves again, or at least a pile of his DNA swiped in 1928, and is take to a hospital.  Why the 80 year gap?  Why choose a guy in India when, even in 1928, New York would be the likely location to address the world (or maybe London or Paris — definitely not the Karakoram Mountains.),  And they just happened to pick the only guy in India who was not Indian or British?

In the hospital, much like Neo, Keanu is reborn slimy, fully formed and hairless, emerging from a gelatinous goo.  Within minutes he is back to his movie-star self, with a full head of hair but no beard.

Kathy Bates shows up as the Secretary of Defense and begins grilling him.  She is particularly repulsive in this role.  I’m not sure what I’ve seen her in since Misery, so maybe it is her, or maybe it is her resemblance to an actual vaguely feminine, arrogant, feckless shrew of a Secretary of State — referring, of course to John Kerry.

Keanu, or Klaatu — his freakishly similar alien name — is having none of this, so escapes.  Proving that he truly is not of his earth and does not understand our strange ways, he eats a tuna salad sandwich from a vending machine.  Predictably, he passes out in the mens room of the train station.

After being revived, he calls Jennifer to help him, and she shows up with her obnoxious step-son.  Klaatu Reeves applies an ointment to his wound which heals it and conveniently even dissolves the stitches.  He directs Jennifer to drive out into the country where he retrieves another sphere from a pond.  Other spheres around the world begin collecting the earth’s flora and fauna like an ark.

Klaatu Reeves finally spills the beans.  He is not here to save humanity, he and robot AL GORT are here to save the earth from humanity.  Trying to make the case for our species, Jennifer takes him to see her mentor John Cleese.  Unfortunately her obnoxious son rats them out to the government.

When the government tries to use a diamond drill on AL GORT, he breaks down into billions of metallic insect-like nanites.  The nanite swarm spreads, devouring soldiers, stadiums, trucks.  After seeing Jennifer crying with her obnoxious son, Klaatu Reeves has a Terminatoresque “I know now why you cry” moment.

He stops the nanites, sparing humanity, but the sphere lets out another blast.  This one, an EMP, shuts down everything electric.  IMDb and Wiki both indicate that the earth is left forever without electrical capability, but I don’t see where that is indicated.  Klaatu Reeves does say that there will be a cost to humanity, but that could have just meant we had to rebuild, giving earth a breather.  And how exactly would we be prohibited from using electricity forever?  Did they suspend the laws of physics?

OK, say the all-knowing, beneficent Klaatu Reeves and AL GORT have thrust us back into the stone age for the good of the earth.  Welcome back TB, plague, polio, smallpox, dysentery.  Anywhere people are clustered, look forward to horse shit up to your knees. Hooked up to a dialysis machine?  Don’t start any long novels.  I just hope these brainiacs remembered to provide for the the cooling towers in 400+ nuclear power plants around the world.  And it is a certainty that as civilization breaks down, the biggest growth industries will be tribalism, slavery and war.

Maybe some other do-gooder aliens will show up in a thousand years and save humanity again — this time by giving us the miracle of electricity.

It didn’t move the earth for me, and I’ve had my fill of sanctimonious aliens, but it was much better than I had been lead to expect.

Post-Post:

• This is the role Klaatu Reeves was born to play — a blank-faced, emotionless “other”.  And he pulls it off very well.  Would have been nice to have one “whoa” though.
• How is nanites not in spellcheck?
• Supposedly Klaatu Barada Nikto is in here somewhere, but I missed it.  Many points in the original movie are revisited — names are re-used, and scenes re-played, sometimes in a different context.  But why bury something so iconic? Were they afraid kiddies would only know it from Army of Darkness?
• Based on Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates.

Al Gort

Pat Healy and Sara Paxton from The Innkeepers.  That’s all I really needed to know to make this a must-see

Sadly, it also stars the odious David Koechner, doesn’t give Sara anything to do, and has directorial problems.

Pat Healy and wife are a cute couple with a new baby.  His day is off to a great start as he notices an eviction notice on their apartment door.  Then he gets fired from his job at the garage.  The obvious solution is to go to a bar.  There he sees an old friend Vince, who he hasn’t seen for 5 years.

Vince works in collections as a knuckle-breaker; also a dragger.  Healy inquires about joining that prestigious line of work, but doesn’t seem cut out for it.

Healy passes a guy doing some coke in the bathroom, and sees a $50 bill in the  toilet.  Being American dollars, this is very appropriate.  Coming back out, he sees Vince has joined Koechner and Sara at their table.  Koechner portrays the same overbearing, obnoxious character he always plays.  He buys the group a $300 bottle of tequila and offers $50 to the first one to down their shot.  The games have begun.

The fun continues innocently with bets on darts, slapping asses, hitting on hookers. At a strip club, a more serious challenge ends with Healy being being punched in his face, which brings out his inner Tyler Durden.  The bets escalate, leading to the only place this can lead to.  That’s not to say it’s not possible to have fun while zooming toward the inevitable.  But it is to say that there should have been a lot more fun getting there.

Audiences, especially in the horror genre, have been burned so many times that the barest hint of quality often becomes over-praised.

It’s like when you are forced at gunpoint to listen to jazz and unexpectedly 3 consecutive notes form something resembling a melody.  Your heart beats a little faster in anticipation of an actual tune.

This is only an OK movie, garnering praise way above its pay-grade.  Pat Healy does great work as always, but the cast falls off steeply after that.  Ethan Embry as Vince is overwhelmingly adequate, nothing more.  Koechner is just a repulsive blowhard; that’s his stock character and I guess he plays it well, but it doesn’t make it pleasant to watch.

And poor, lovely Sara Paxton.  Did she read the script before signing?  Other than one cringe-inducing fully-clothed sex scene, she is given nothing do to.  I mean, literally nothing.  She is silent arm candy to a jerk.  This is far, far beneath her.

The tone and pacing also seemed uneven.  This was director E.L. Katz’s first joint.  It isn’t horrible, but it doesn’t quite work either.  The pacing is off, the cinematography just seems wrong, and the fine line between comedy and horror is not adequately resolved.

In conclusion, poor Sara.  It was nearly impossible to find a single good shot of her to capture in the entire movie.  All in all, a huge let down given the stars and reviews I had read.

Post-Post:

• E.L. Katz was a producer on the low-budget Aggression Scale which I quite liked.
• Writer Trent Haaga played Clyde in Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula.  Just the thought of that is so great that I refuse to watch it and be disappointed.
• Even the poster above bugs me.  At first I thought the yellow shape backing the title shape was a theater ticket, but no; I got nothing.  Good maniacal shot of Healy; Koechner seems appropriately repulsive — a fair representation; Sara displays the same detachment she shows in the movie, so at least it is an accurate portrayal of how she is underutilized.  But what the hell does Vince find so high-larious?  OK, now the yellow backing looks like an open file folder — but why?  And why is there a single bill floating around?  That doesn’t exactly reflect the titular thrill, an out of control evening or coke-fueled insanity.  No one ever says “It’s all about a Benjamin.”
• It is not uncommon to say some guys are baby-faced.  Healy is the only guy who seems to be infant-faced.
• And Davey K, enough with the hipster hats — you’re 50!  Backwards baseball cap in the wash?

Now here’s a good candidate for movies boxed 20 for $5.  Not that it’s bad, it just is extremely slow and poorly shot.  OK, I guess that is the definition of bad.  However, it is partially redeemed by a fascinating (if unoriginal) plot and the performance of the increasingly reliable Jake Gyllenhaal.

A colleague recommends a movie to history professor Adam (Gyllenhaal).  In the background of one scene, he sees an actor who looks exactly like himself.  This set-up has been used in countless movies and TV shows. Fortunately it is a classic trope, often involving the nature of reality or identity, which never goes stale.  Unless it is the one about Peter Brady.

Adam tries calling the actor Anthony and has a very awkward conversation with his wife.  Later he has an awkward conversation with Anthony, which seems to be progress.

Then Anthony takes the initiative and calls Adam to set up a meeting.  Anthony’s pregnant wife snoops on Adam at his school.  Finally the stalking reaches its apex when Anthony takes Adam’s wife away for the weekend, and Adam pays the pregnant Ms. Anthony a visit and pretends to be Adam.

And there is this:No idea.

Anthony gets into an accident with Mrs. Adam, and Mrs. Anthony figures out that she is in bed with a doppelganger.  Then some really crazy shit happens that I can’t even begin to convey.

There is a really good Twilight Zone in here somewhere.  And not even a 4th Season TZ padded out to an hour.  This is a 30 minute episode slowed down to fill 90 minutes and shot all in sepia tones.  Only my suckertude for this kind of story kept me interested.

Post-Post:

• Based on a novel entitled The Double by Jose Saramago.  Coincidentally, there was another movie released in 2013 also entitled The Double, based on a Dostoevsky novel.  Still not as confusing as The Returned.
• I have another DVD based on a Saramago novel entitled Blindness.  That one was part of an 8 movies for $5 collection.  Hermano can’t catch a break.