Michael Rennie had no reason to be ill on Friday, The Day the Earth Stood Still. After all, the remake of his most famous role[1] had a lot of cool to it. Nice effects budget, Keanu Reeves in a role tailor-made for him, thoughtful science fiction examinations of humanity. It was, on the whole, a good movie.

Which, in an odd kind of way, is exactly what was wrong with it. I’m not sure if it’s peculiar to me, or if I’m objectively right about this: but it needed to be a great movie, to be successful. And it never reached that level. The acting was all eminently competent without being inspiring. The effects would have looked outstanding five years ago, but they only look pretty cool today. The central questions of the film, does homo sapiens deserve to thrive? and what about at the expense of other species?, are important ones that perfectly fits the sci-fi mold. And if there had been any doubt about what answers the film would provide, then the examination of the question might not have felt quite so shallow as it did.

I don’t know, maybe it is my fault, holding expectations a little too high. All I know is, I wanted to think it was great, the way I thought last year’s sci-fi hit was great. And I only thought it was good. Oh, well.

[1] I mean, as far as I know.