Movie Review: The Day the Earth Stopped

Monday night I watched “The Day the Earth Stopped” featuring those geniuses of the large screen C. Thomas Howell, Judd Nelson, and Sinead McCafferty. I will begin here, as I do each review, with something that the publishers can affix to the back of the work to provide notice about what the lucky purchaser can look forward to enjoying:

Part Independance Day, part that crappy movie where Rosie O’Donnell plays retarded bus rider (easy casting) this movie should not be watched by anyone with a frontal lobe who hasn’t spent the vast bulk of the day sniffing glue and giving themselves scrotal lacerations to dip in lemon juice. There’s the one scene with the hot chick that is redeemable, but alas, they didn’t put that 30 seconds on a loop. I’d find Gary Coleman playing center for the Lakers equally believable as this movie.

Now, how bad was it? Well, I restarted the movie at 4 minutes in to take notes. At 15 minutes I punched out of the note taking, and at 40 minutes I just had to turn it off. It wasn’t even bad-good, like those movies that are so ridiculous that you have to keep watching. It was just Bad-bad, like Ishtar, George Takei’s hair and the Yankees bullpen.

Anyway, here are my notes, fleshed out to be complete sentences.

– Movie starts with millions and millions of spaceships flying by planets and suns and stuff. They finally arrive at their destination of earth at about the 2 minute mark, at which time you see a close up of the ships, and they are not the same ones that were flying across your screen as they announced to a nearly breathless audience that indeed, C Thomas Howell and Judd Nelson would be a part of this extravaganza.

– At 2:15 in, a small ship breaks off from the big ships and then lands on Earth.

– 2:30, now we are getting somewhere! For reasons not clearly explained, we now have a naked woman walking through the woods. She looks kinda like Monica Belluci, only with Angelina Jolie’s lips. But, you don’t actually see her face. Well, maybe you do, I don’t know, I was concentrating on how the director let us know that Earth is considerably colder than her home planet. Why the hell is she creeping through the woods? The way she walks is bizarre, it’s like a 4 year old doing the pee pee dance. Whatever, this unknown planet attacking us has some serious smokeshows. The naked pee pee dance walk with D cups endeth and 3 minutes. [Ed Note: this is where they should have looped the film. BTW- Turn the safe search off and do a google search on this chick and you will see the scene, and then you too can ponder what it would be like to be invaded by glass cutters from space.]

Photo Credit: Rainer Hosch

(More after Jump, if you dare)

OK, so now we start to get the feel for the movie, we get our first look at the protagonists, and sweet merciful spongebob does this thing head south in a hurry.

– OK, so there is now some Transformers looking dude standing over the city, Humvees come rolling up to a padlocked fence, and out jumps our first soldier. He’s wearing an IBA (modern body armor) only the thing has no plates in it, so he’s not actually defended, and he has on a T-Shirt. His helmet has no cover on it, and (HOLY SHIT NO) he has grendades hanging from the spoon on the front of the armor. He looks like the pimp from Deuce Bigelow.

– OK, some dude who looks kinda familiar seems to be in charge of this situation, we know that because he pulled out a cigarette and had some little catamite looking dude light his cigarette. And now he is inexplicably taking off his shirt and tie to stand there in a T-shirt. Dude, you couldn’t do that in the humvee?

– Alien Transformers guy still standing there.

– Some other dude in the building with the guy in charge is in the restroom trying to wiz, and is coming up with a dry fire. Reminds me of privates on “piss test day” when Sgt ____ used to say, “damn you look good. What say you come over later and we have a few drinks together?” Maybe the dude has a kidney problem or something, but this whole movie is like one large prostate exam.

– Ok, now they are all rolling out the woods and the dude in charge is asking for map “996954” which is a 6 digit grid coordinate with no identifiers. That seems odd, no?

– OK, now there is a naked dude running through the woods, and the military dudes are tracking him with M16’s and shotguns etc, with flashlights affixed on top like your standard “gear queer” in wanna be military movies. Now dude in charge is saying that they should track the guy via their “infrared” but not a single dude in this unit seems to have any NODS (Night Observation Device) or anything else with Infrared, and besides, they all have flashlights and the dude is like 7 feet away.

– They shoot the naked dude with darts, he uses some magic to stun them, runs a bit further, in chage dude hits him with more darts, he passes out into the river. If the guy has these superpowers, how come he goes down like a sack of crap to 2 darts in the neck. And what was the back up plan if he didn’t?

– OK, back to the naked chick, now standing in the middle of the road. Along comes another military vehicle with Can’t Piss Guy and some other dude who looks like he likes to sit on park benches across from Catholic schools. They apparently assume that this naked broad with the model quality boobs was an innocent bystander to the crash of the alien craft, and that she can’t speak English as a result. Meanwhile, In Charge Guy calls them on the radio and they say they have been delayed, but inexplicably manage to not report that they just picked up a naked broad walking in the middle of the street.

– OK, so Naked Alien Dude is sedated in the mini-CP out in the woods, and the Can’t Piss Guy and Not So Bright guy roll up in the humvee with the naked chick now bedecked in a military top and no pants. Camera man sucks, cause he never goes below her waist. In Charge Guy is saying that the crashed alien craft was a 2 seater, and they have a naked dude, and he wonders where the other alien has gone to. No one still seems able to notice that the gorgeous naked chick, standing there with a not so bright look on her face, and still seemingly freezing to death, might somehow be related to each other.

– The two dudes report in, and again fail to mention the naked brunnette who is now like a piece of luggage.

At this point, I stopped taking notes. I couldn’t take it anymore.

If you are in a humvee, and you see a naked chick with gorgeous breasts, I would ask each of you to alert your commander at the first opportunity. Seriously, because you never know what a naked model might auger for your future. As an excercise in military operations, please write me a salute report in the comments here on how to correctly inform higher of what you have going on.

And for the love of God, do not see this movie.

Category: General Whackos