After Earth

I had no idea that M. Night Shyamalan had directed this film until I saw his name pop up on the closing credits. That's because the film has a simple, cookie cutter feel to it, with a look familiar from at least a dozen other recent Hollywood movie and nothing in the way of originality in terms of voice or angle to make it stand out.

It's not that this is completely awful, it's just that it's so, well, undemanding. Will Smith and his real-life son Jaden play a father and son (surprise) who crash land on a post-apocalyptic Earth. Will is injured, so he sends his kid out to activate a homing beacon and thus enable their rescue. Along the way, the boy becomes a man.

It all sounds very sentimental and rather sickening and it is. Jaden Smith is no actor and never has been, but he has made a career of hanging on to his father's coat-tails and that's the case here. Will Smith is a little better, but he seems to be coasting along too. The constant CGI is very boring, and when you discover that the antagonists are rubbishy CGI beasties along the lines of 10,000 BC, well that's the time that you stop caring.