Movie Review: "After Earth"

After Earth is simple enough to understand, primarily because we've seen many similar films before.  In the near future, humanity has to leave Earth because we destroyed it through global warming -- blah, blah, blah.  A thousand years later Will Smith and his son crash land on an evolved planet Earth and must survive the harshness of the environs to call for help.  It's a straightforward premise, that takes to overexplaining its ideas rather than letting them unfold naturally in the logical flow of the story.  Even still, there are a lot of cool ideas on play here, with some genuinely gripping action sequences sprinkled throughout.  As well, M. Night Shyamalan manages to put his directorial stamp onto the film, proving that he still has plenty to offer, however After Earth is not his comeback vehicle, because the story is just too half-baked to ever find a rhythm.  The overexplained ideas often feel tacked on, and not all ideas mesh together to form a whole, making the film feel incomplete.  However, the whole that we do have with this film, will satisfy for a lazy afternoon with nothing else to watch.

I give After Earth a C!