( CNN ) -- Call it the second coming . Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves star in `` The Day the Earth Stood Still . '' Klaatu the spaceman first visited these parts in Robert Wise 's 1951 Cold War classic `` The Day the Earth Stood Still , '' when he threatened to blow us all up unless we stopped threatening to do the job for him . Klaatu was n't exactly greeted with open arms back then -- he was shot and hounded for his troubles -- and if the earth has moved on over the past half century , you would n't know it from the trigger-happy welcoming committee that surrounds his luminous snowball of a space craft in New York 's Central Park . Where sci-fi films in the 1950s used to see red ( s ) , today they go green . Directed by Scott Derrickson ( `` The Exorcism of Emily Rose '' ) and scripted by David Scarpa ( `` The Last Castle '' ) , `` The Day the Earth Stood Still '' 2.0 ditches the Cold War theme . Klaatu ( Keanu Reeves ) means to save the planet , but war is n't the problem . Mankind is the problem . The filmmakers have come up with an effective Spielbergian prologue , cutting from the Himalayas in 1928 to contemporary biology professor Helen Benson ( Jennifer Connelly ) , whisked from her home by uniformed men in response to an undisclosed national emergency . It 's strange to think that in the final hour the government will turn to molecular biologists for guidance , though true to form ( as in the 1951 original ) the scientists are quickly overruled by the politicians . But once Keanu-Klaatu emerges from his blubbery placenta spacesuit , the movie shifts into familiar fugitive thriller terrain and the tension slowly drains out of it . Dr. Benson helps him escape to New Jersey where he can meet with an alien undercover agent in McDonald 's , and she can introduce him to a true world leader , a Nobel laureate played by John Cleese . If you 're going to cast a top star as an alien being , Reeves seems a solid choice . He 's always been able to process human emotion with a Spock-like detachment . `` This body is going to take some getting used to , '' Klaatu cautions shakily in his first scene , but in fact he gets the walking-talking thing down pat in no time . He 's a messianic figure -- he fires lasers out of his wrists , like a reverse-stigmata and he has the power to resurrect the dead ( though unlike Jesus , Klaatu killed the guy in the first place ) . The climax even includes a plague of robotic locusts . But the movie never comes up with a convincing explanation for why his superpowers do n't extend to , say , picking up a telephone . Apparently the aliens have been monitoring us for at least 70 years , but Klaatu is taken aback to discover our emotional side . Mostly he learns this from Jaden Smith , who plays Dr. Benson 's stepson Jacob . It 's not necessarily a good emotional side : Jacob is a whiny , obstinate and disobedient little boy that would lead most extraterrestrials -- and not a few of the rest of us -- to reach for the destruct button . Still , it 's surely remiss to wipe out the species before lending an ear to Johann Sebastian Bach . The original movie is beginning to show its age , but at least it holds up as a story . That 's more than you can say for a preachy , draggy blockbuster that espouses a radical message of Luddite technophobia at the same time as it conspicuously plugs Honda and LG Electronics , and dresses up its half-baked thinking in blinding ( but not that brilliant ) CGI wizardry . Johnny Carson used to joke that his 1964 bomb `` Looking for Love '' was so bad it was transferred to flammable nitrate film stock . If they 're so determined to be green , perhaps the producers of `` The Day the Earth Stood Still '' would consider something biodegradable . `` The Day the Earth Stood Still '' is rated PG-13 and runs 103 minutes . For Entertainment Weekly 's review , click here .
`` The Day the Earth Stood Still '' a remake of 1951 classic . Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu , alien come to earth to tell humanity to straighten up . New version suffers from preachy script , long , dull scenes .