‘Earth’ offers big bang, but the ending is a bust

A headline in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" indicates the world is about to end not with a whimper but a bang.

The opposite, alas, is true of the movie, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic. The film is great, truly great, for almost all of its entire length. It's all bang. And then comes the last 10 minutes, and it's whimper city.

It's not that the screen becomes placid -- far from it. The special effects go crazy, swirling great masses of pixels around the screen and unleashing anarchic plumes of digital destruction. And that is the problem.

Just as the story celebrates the essential goodness of the human spirit, the filmmaking loses its soul.

But before that happens, the movie is outstanding.

Who better to play the emotionless alien Klaatu than Keanu Reeves? It is a rare match of a role with his own particular lack of talent. It sounds like a joke, but he is actually perfect for the part -- aloof, unemotional and he speaks in a monotone. Plus, he wears a suit better than any actor this side of Richard Gere.

Klaatu has arrived on Earth (on an impressive planet-like sphere) to determine the fate of mankind. "I come to save the planet," he says, meaning he wants to save it from the people who live on it.

Trying to change his mind is an astrobiologist, Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly. Helen has to be the hottest astrobiologist ever, her black hair pulled back in a pert pony tail. But she sure knows her astrobiology.

The official response to the UFO sphere is to blast it and anything that comes out of it, but Helen is willing to listen to Klaatu, to hear his message. That's fortunate, because all efforts at violence are foiled by the special-effect robot Gort, who looks just like the Gort in the 1951 version, only much, much taller.

The film's best feature is its script by David Scarpa. It combines a terrible finality (when Klaatu says "There's nothing you can do" to stop the aliens' plans, we believe him) with clever turns of phrase and unexpected moments.

When Helen's stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith, much less impressive than he was in "The Pursuit of Happyness") asks what kind of name is Klaatu, Helen says, "It's foreign, I think." Later, after the boy knows what Klaatu is, a cop holds the alien at gunpoint. "Don't hurt him," says the boy, and when the cop says he won't, Jacob pointedly says, "I wasn't talking to you."

Scott Derrickson's direction is thrilling; it's a completely new interpretation of the story. He ramps up the sense of urgency, pushing the dramatic tension ever higher.

It's all going so well, and then comes the ending. It's such a pity about that ending.