After Earth Reviews
Top CriticMost disappointing is the film's lack of ambition, as what could have been a sparky mainstream space opera becomes just another tedious jungle chase movie.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The movie takes off from a concept as basic as a videogame, and it sticks to that concept, without surprise.
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| Original Score: C+
A film in which the text and subtext-an effortlessly gifted father presses his less-talented son to follow in his footsteps-are in perfect alignment. Alas, only in one of the two does the story end happily.
By the standards of M. Night's Shyamalan's recent films, After Earth is surprisingly not horrible.
It's no classic, but it's a special movie: spectacular and wise.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's impossible to take this movie seriously, certainly not as seriously as it takes itself.
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| Original Score: C-
The characters are emotionally neutered; the average viewer won't care about them. The pacing is plodding and uneven.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Too bad, too, that the CGI creatures in the film look as fake as the monkeys in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Even with his charismatic dad in his earpiece calling the shots, Jaden can't turn himself into a movie star by sheer force of Will.
After Earth at least looks distinctive, and the movie's overall atmosphere of close-quarter jungle delirium is enhanced by the cramped, earth-toned interiors of spaceships, off-world colony condos and crashed cockpits.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's just a somewhat mundane coming-of-age story with a terribly miscast lead.
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| Original Score: C-
Is "After Earth" the worst movie ever made?
There is no small irony that this sci-fi action adventure is about surviving a serious crash. The scorched earth left behind by "After Earth" is sure to leave a scar on everyone involved.
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| Original Score: 1.5/5
Much of Will's dialogue consists of life lessons imparted to the boy, and they sound like a motivational seminar.
The futuristic production design is blandly generic, the special effects, props and costumes cheap and slapdash-looking.
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| Original Score: 1/4
What undoes the film is its rather rancid parent-child sentimentality (a Shyamalan staple, admittedly) and a charisma-free performance from the younger Smith that suggests the apple has fallen very far from the tree, indeed.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Mr. Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, are producers on "After Earth," which suggests that there was no one on the production who could really say no to him.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The truly sad thing is, this wouldn't be a bad story if you stripped away all the sci-fi flash and psychobabble.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Though it's meant to be pulse-pounding, After Earth is a lethargic slog.
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| Original Score: 2/4
After Earth merits comparison with 2000's Battlefield Earth, John Travolta's godawful film tribute to the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, it's that bad.
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| Original Score: 1/4
A passably entertaining adventure best suited to 10-year-old boys.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The only value in watching it is to see an expensive disaster slowly unfold.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
After Earth is refreshing in that it's not rife with fast-cuts, whooshing camera shots, and overblown visual effects.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
"After Earth" isn't just chaotic and desperate -- and grindingly slow -- it's also lazy.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Some of "After Earth" is intriguing, if you ignore the premise and the story and the direction and much of Jaden Smith's performance. Other than that...
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| Original Score: 2/5
After Earth may lack the neck-swiveling awfulness of Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, but it quickly sinks in its logorrheic solemnity.
[Shyamalan's] grasp of film fundamentals is so tenuous that this hot-air balloon gets blown into the rarefied air of the worst movies ever made.
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| Original Score: 1/4
M. Night Shyamalan is branching out, coming up with new ways to make bad movies. His plan must be to exhaust all possibilities, so as to eventually come full circle and make a good one by accident.
Summer 2013 has its first bomb, and sadly, it's landed right on Will Smith.
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| Original Score: 0/5
"After Earth" is a work of hubris magnified by multiple miscalculations, the kind of film that would cause Ed Wood to excuse himself and skulk to the exit.
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| Original Score: 1/4
The level to which 'After Earth' is a catastrophe is amazing.
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| Original Score: 1.2/10
After Earth tells the story of an inexperienced boy trying desperately to please his father while making one mistake after another, and as such, it becomes an uncomfortable metaphor for itself.
Jaden is fine at running, jumping, fearful trembling, and affecting steely resolution. He doesn't yet have his father's charisma; perhaps to help him out, dad opted not to bring that charisma to the set.
Bits of the plot, including the environmental science of the new Earth, make no sense. The dialogue is leaden. And the special effects are surprisingly unconvincing ...
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| Original Score: 1/4
Basically, this is Smith and his real-life son, Jaden (both affecting ridiculous mid-Atlantic accents) talking the audience to death for something like 90 minutes before the closing credits.
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| Original Score: 1/4
"After Earth" won't change your world, but it's attractive ...
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shyamalan is clearly a director-for-hire here, his disinterest palpable from first frame to last.
[A] disappointingly generic film ...
