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THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL The 1951 version still holds up beautifully as a science fiction classic, but I'll refrain from taking the usual route of using a cherished original to bludgeon a shoddy remake to death. In the case of the new Day, there's no need: The film mostly fails on its own terms. This feels less like a remake of that 50s gem than a companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth – the difference is that Al Gore was a lot more fun to watch than Keanu Reeves, who's so stiff here that you fear rigor mortis will set in before the movie wraps. Reeves plays Klaatu, an alien who arrives on Earth with the intention of – what exactly? Initially, he asks to speak to our planet's leaders (as the original's Klaatu did), presumably to provide them with an ultimatum: Shape up or face the dire consequences. But the next minute, he's already settled on wiping out the human race, because all he knows about us is that we love war and violence and death. It actually comes as a shock to him that humans, as repped by sympathetic scientist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (a self-conscious Jaden Smith), are capable of love and affection and devotion. I dunno, you'd think a visitor from a far advanced civilization would have done a little bit of intergalactic homework before stopping by – at least a cursory glance through the best-selling Earthling Customs for Dummies or something. This inconsequential production strives to seem important by addressing humankind's destruction of our natural resources and intrinsic need to pollute the planet. And yet one of the movie's key scenes is set inside a McDonald's. Nice. *1/2
DELGO There's a perverse pleasure in taking down a bloated Hollywood bomb that has managed to siphon away two hours of our life – let's face it, attacking turkeys like Battlefield Earth and The Love Guru won't lead anyone to lose even a second of sleep out of guilt. But lambasting an independent feature made with dedication and hard work is another matter, and that's the feeling stirred by the animated film Delgo. It's no fun playing the bully, but when the end result is as atrocious as what's on display here, it's even more difficult to remain silent. Produced over the course of several years by Atlanta's Fathom Studios, Delgo is as hard on the eyes as it is on the brain, employing an ungainly brand of animation to relate its crushingly dull yarn about a long-standing blood feud between two separate factions in the land of Jhamora. Young Delgo (voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr.), a Lockni, and Princess Kyla (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a Nohrin, fall for each other, even though their respective tribes are perpetually primed to declare war; an evil officer (who else but Malcolm McDowell) takes advantage of the situation and sets up an alliance with an exiled empress (the late Anne Bancroft, who passed away 3-1/2 years ago). Val Kilmer, Burt Reynolds and Kelly Ripa are just a few of the name players lending their vocal cords to the cause, but their line deliveries are as flat as those of the two leads. The one exception is Chris Kattan, who provides the comic relief as Delgo's sidekick, Filo. He's absolutely insufferable in a noisy turn that tags Filo as one of the worst characters ever to (dis)grace an animated motion picture – it's like witnessing the resurrection of Jar Jar Binks. *
FOUR CHRISTMASES The purpose of trailers, as I see it, is to showcase the film's best scenes in an effort to get folks to the box office during opening week and beyond. The trailer for Four Christmases fails this test, as it focuses almost exclusively on barf gags, pratfalls and other broad, physical comedy sure to draw the yahoo crowd but not necessarily anyone else. A more representative trailer, on the other hand, would have revealed a movie that's worth seeing – a smart, tart confection whose observations about family dysfunction will make viewers squirm in their seats even as the laughs pour off the screen. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon headline as Brad and Kate, a couple who always bypass their families at Christmastime in order to take overseas vacations. But complications force the pair to visit their relatives after all, and since both sets of parents (Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek are his, Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen are hers) are divorced, that means four familial gatherings in one day. It proves to be a grueling endurance test, as each is humiliated in turn by parents, siblings and other assorted in-laws. Movies of this nature always follow the humor with an excruciating final half-hour of phony moralizing or cheap sentiment, so it's a credit that this one not only keeps this sober-minded portion of the film short but also makes it develop naturally from the situations that have preceded it (in other words, the character evolution feels natural rather than the work of a hack screenwriter). But honestly, who's here for anything besides laughs? On that front, Four Christmases soundly delivers on the ho-ho-hos. ***
