So everyone pretty much agrees that M. Night Shyamalan has been on a downward spiral in terms of quality with his films. Each one just gets worse and worse. After Earth ends that trend (which isn’t that hard since his last feature was The Last Airbender), though that isn’t necessarily enough. This film is still mediocre, which is a shame because the stars are great and the premise is interesting. Will Smith plays Cypher Raige, who crash lands on a planet unsuitable for humans. The only other survivor is his son, Kitai (Jaden Smith). T turns out, the planet is Earth 1,000 years after the human population evacuated it. Cypher is injured and cannot move much, thus Kitai has the responsibility of crossing dangerous territories to locate a distress beacon in order to save their lives.

The first problem – having Will Smith literally sit on his butt for the rest of the movie. His role is to watch everything his son does and guide him from checkpoint to checkpoint. Sure, I understand Jaden can lead a film, but you don’t just have a bankable star like Will Smith sit the entire time. And Jaden doesn’t have the Will Smith charm just yet.

The film also plays like a video game. Kitai has a limited quantity of oxygen capsules, he has a time limit before it’s game over, he has to run from checkpoint to checkpoint because the Earth gets freezing cold at night and he has to reach certain “hotspots” to survive. It feels very lame and robotic for the film to be so “video game simulated.” And we never really get a sense of danger.

Lastly, I don’t understand why the film talks so much about how everything on Earth has evolved to kill humans, yet the most dangerous creature and final bad guy in the film is a monstrous alien. Makes perfect sense.

Two out of four Kent's.