Will, Jaden Smith In Space, Without Fun

Will, Jaden Smith In Space, Without Fun

Will Smith (left) and Jaden Smith star in After Earth, an unfortunately humorless film. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures. Will Smith (left) and Jaden Smith star in After Earth, an unfortunately humorless film. Will Smith (left) and Jaden Smith star in After Earth, an unfortunately humorless film. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures. After Earth Director: M. Night Shyamalan Genre: Sci-fi Adventure Running Time: 100 minutes Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and some disturbing images With: Will Smith, Jaden Smith A disastrous father-son endeavor about a calamitous father-son expedition, After Earth doesn't play to the strengths of any of its major participants. Will Smith portrays a stern outer space hero devoid of the bantering wit and easygoing demeanor of his trademark roles. Director M. Night Shyamalan, auteur of twisty The Sixth Sense, struggles with a surprise-free plot and a trial-by-fire moral so earnest it suggests a circa-1944 World War II flick. And Jaden Smith, in the movie's tissue-thin principal role, is called on to act. He'll start losing viewers with his wooden opening narration. Set 1,000 years in the future, the story begins long after humans have fled an environmentally trashed Earth. Their new home is hardly congenial, being populated by people-eating Ursa — creatures that aren't a form of bear; they're the usual space-monster hybrid of squid, cockroach and pit bull. The Ursa are blind, but they can smell human dread. So the only people who can best then are those who are literally fearless, like Gen. Cypher Raige (the elder Smith). While he travels the universe, stoically doing brave stuff, his son Kitai (the younger Smith) is at Ranger Corps school, trying to become just like dreary old Dad. As is characteristic of aspiring cinematic Top Guns, Kitai is academically brilliant and physically unsurpassed. But he's hobbled by terror that stems from a childhood incident and recurs — again and again and then again — in motivating flashbacks. 

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