Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Day the Earth Stood Still, The
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 134 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Sci-fi
Written by:
Edmund H. North (1951 screenplay)
David Scarpa
Directed by: Scott Derrickson
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 12, 2008
DVD: April 7, 2009
Running Time: minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence
Starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, John Cleese, James Hong, Jaden Smith, Kathy Bates, and Kathy Bates
The Day the Earth Stood Still is 20th Century Fox’s contemporary reinvention of its 1951 classic. Klaatu, an alien who arrives on our planet, triggers a global upheaval. As governments and scientists race to unravel the mystery behind the visitor’s appearance, a woman and her young stepson get caught up in his mission – and come to understand the ramifications of Klaatu calling himself a “friend to the Earth.” (20th Century Fox)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
This contemporary remake of the science-fiction classic knew what it was doing when it cast Keanu Reeves, the movies' greatest stone face since Buster Keaton.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
The one unforgivable crime committed in this remake is the lack of the original's most famous line of dialogue: "Klaatu barada nikto." Would it have been so tough to squeeze that in somewhere?
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
I can't explain the film's main problem without giving plot points away; suffice to say that, after decades of watching Earth, Klaatu's team of observers has missed a crucial event you and I witness every day. I can tell you about the secondary problem, though: too much money.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Passed my popcorn-movie test. Using the vast, expensive technology of a big studio production, it roused enough cheap energy to drive me to eat a bag of popcorn fit for a circus animal and wash it down with a quart of Diet Coke.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Just because the new The Day the Earth Stood Still is green, though, doesn't mean it's dull. If anything, there's a lot more mayhem and destruction this time around.
Read Full Review >Empire Helen O'Hara
A remake that does not disgrace the original, this is sufficiently different to stand alone and just as relevant in its concerns – as well as succeeding (arguably better) as a thriller. And after this performance, are we sure that Keanu Reeves is really human?
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
For most of the way this ecofriendly fantasy is pleasantly clunky, and Reeves, whose expressive range here is slim to none, is perfectly cast as the alien.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
Like the big shiny sphere at its center, the film is fairly pretty, but there's no real sense that there's anything inside it.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Although the new version, which stars Keanu Reeves, is likely to make audiences pine for the meta-irony of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," it's not a complete failure.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
All this is presented in an expensive, good-looking film that is well-made by Scott Derrickson, but to no avail.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, confining his usual two-and-a-half-note vocal range to half that.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The story, an updated version of the 1951 classic about a portentous extraterrestrial visit, feels musty and derivative, and not only because it's a remake.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Cammila Albertson
Pretty good as science fiction thrillers go, but sadly, there isn't much more to say about it.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
One of the big problems here is that, despite much exposition, the nature of Klaatu's mission on Earth isn't at all clear.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It lacks the simple elegance and intelligence of the earlier film, and employs special effects and pointless action scenes to replace passages of dialogue.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Scott Mendelson
A 'so-so' movie. It's not particularly good, but it's competent and more or less successful in its goals.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The opening stretch, when the visitor arrives on earth and blithely dresses down mankind, is great fun. But screenwriter David Scarpi has drained away much of the sentiment.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Despite the best efforts of stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, this new "Day" is tired and corny.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Something has been lost in the translation, and it's not just the script.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
As a message movie, it's preachy without being serious; for an action movie, there's a lot of racket but not much fun.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The original Day the Earth Stood Still had a paranoid poetry that lifted the audience up even as it warned the world to come together. This one is so dour it just comes off as a scolding.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And The Day the Earth Stood Still could be worse.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
The film's major action sequences are never exciting, and even the now-requisite destruction of New York feels lazy.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
This botched remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" seriously dishonors the seriously fine 1951 sci-fi landmark on which it's based.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
Dunno about the Earth, but time certainly stands still for a goodly portion of Scott Derrickson's expensively produced but utterly boneheaded remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Klaatu is a dream role for the beautifully blank Reeves, since he doesn’t even have to pretend to emote.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
A jumble of spare parts and leftover dialogue, as if it had been assembled out of unused bits of every movie where an unknown whatzit threatens our way of life and the government goes into full institutional pants-crapping panic mode.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
What's never explained is why anyone would do such a dumb remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Suffice it to say that these morons have, quite simply, turned The Day the Earth Stood Still on its head and what's falling out of its pockets in that upended state is a stream of junk.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.5 (out of 10) based on 134 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mike H gave it a0:
What happened? seriously... did the original make sense? cos this one didn't... from what i could understand it appeared that aliens came to earth to kill everyone then halfway through decided to take pity on humans and left the planet, leaving us without any form of technology as punishment or something. a 40/100 is definitely more than it deserves.
h-h-h-heino j. gave it a1:
One of the worst movies ever. Nevertheless, not the worst.
Jay M. gave it a2:
Exemplifies all that is wrong with Hollywood films: an unnecessary remake, an overwrought script, and a director too enamored with special effects for their own sake. Utterly lacking in every department. Charmless.
Enzo P. gave it a4:
The Day the Earth Stood Still based on the old classic, shows that whatever you do you can never make a remake that is better then the original. But the one thing in this movie that really surprised me is that they didn't say one swear in the entire film. It's a miracle in every PG-13 movie there has to be at least one swear in this there were none. Also another thing about this film that I didn't like was the over the top plot. That was the only thing that really bothered me. The acting was alright the special effects were fascinating, I thought it was pretty unpredictable so overall it was a nice rent it movie. Sure some parts were weird but it still had it's cool clever scenes. I feel like this movie would of been better of not being made because Scott Derrickson wasted his money making this remake it just wasn't worth it.
Fran R gave it a6:
Disappointing.
Robert B gave it a1:
Thank you Keanu Reeves and thank you 20th century fox for ruining a classic.
Peter J gave it a5:
Ok to watch once, but not something I'd ever watch a second time. Never saw the original, but still knew exactly where the movie was going.
