The Day the Earth Moved

A sleeper film that was ignored unfairly, "The Day the Earth Moved" has some good entertainment value. Jackie Cooper stars as the pilot of an aerial photography plane who--along with his photographer--discovers an amazing characteristic about their film. When they realize what they have, they are forced to take drastic measures to save some folks in a small town from harm. The film is definitely television fare, but it does possess an underlying charm which makes it tolerable, and even exciting at some point. Jackie Cooper has been an underrated actor in Hollywood. He has always performed his roles well, and he invariably creates the aura of a jovial personality for his characters.

What an absolutely, totally boring film. Basically, two aerial photographers spot changes in the ground from the photos they have taken. This leads them to believe that there is going to be an earthquake in a sleepy town that the pilot knows.

Far too much time is spent on non-events, so the action is thin on the ground (and up in the air!) They went up three times to take those photos and it felt like we saw every single moment of all three flights.

The viewer is always one step ahead of the plot; not that there is much to be one step ahead of.

Don't watch it. Look at some aerial photographs from Google Earth. They will be more intersting than this film.

Well, it took about 40 minutes to get to them figuring out there something odd with the film that was developed... before that it's about the scientist that flew the plane who was caught speeding in his car in a tiny, tiny town and only had 2 tens on him for the fine so he was arrested and made to do community service to pay off the fine (that was about 1/2 of the movie). The last 15 to 20 minutes is the 2 in plane (photographer and scientist pilot) going back to the tiny, tiny town to rescue the people who already knew the area was prone to earthquake but had no idea that a large earthquake was going to hit them. They didn't argue with the 2 from the plane long before the earth started quaking. Then the people ran around trying to gather stupid things to bring with them before it gets to bad - minus the little girl trying to get the dog.

That about sums up this film. It's OK enough for a one time watch.

4/10

I can't tell exactly why but I kinda liked it. I half wonder if the movie Cars might have gotten a little inspiration from the storyline. Without giving anything away, I think those who who have seen both will know what I mean.

If IMDb existed when I was eight years old and the first time I watched this made for TV movie of the week, I would have rated it a 9 or a 10.

This story HAD such a profound affect on me, I remembered it and for the past few years, I searched for it on VHS, Usenet, Bittorrents, etc... without success. A week ago I brought this story up in a conversation and it dawned on me to see if Youtube had a trailer or clip available. What did I find? The *entire* movie! I was thrilled! So, thirty years later, I finally watch it again on Youtube.

Unfortunately, it failed to captivate me in the same way as it did when I was eight years old. I found the dialog was simplistic and the acting was rather wooden. I was disappointed to find a little bit of racism (intentional or not?) in the script.

On a positive note, as a sci-fi'ish disaster story, The Day the Earth Moved, is actually much better than many of the more modern disaster flicks. At least, this story doesn't insult one's intelligence.