In a distant future, Earth has been destroyed by human carelessness, and humanity has resettled in another solar system. Aliens have genetically engineered monsters to attack them, creatures that have no sense of sight, but which can detect the pheromones humans exhibit when experiencing fear. Will Smith plays a super soldier named Cypher, a warrior devoid of fear and thus invisible to the creatures. Jaden Smith plays his young teenage son Kitai, who is tormented by having watched his older sister killed in front of him as a child, and who longs to follow in his father's footsteps. On a vacation, suggested by the boy's mother to help the two bond, their spaceship crashes on an Earth now overrun with savage creatures. Cypher is critically injured, and must guide his son by radio on a 100 kilometer journey to reach a beacon to signal for rescue.
There are four significant flaws with the film, and I'll take them in ascending order, starting with the least offensive. First, the fact that this savage planet is a ruined Earth contributes absolutely nothing of importance to the film. The father and son could have been stranded anywhere, really. The film wants to send a message that we must take care of our fragile planet in the here and now, but it spends scant minutes on this premise. Mostly, it's just an action movie. Indeed, the fact that it is Earth may make some in the audience question some of the science at play -- for example, with abundant plant life everywhere, how is it possible that the atmosphere is unbreathable?
Second, there is some truly distracting accent work here. Both Will and Jaden Smith deploy a strange accent that evokes... Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained? Yosemite Sam? Foghorn Leghorn? Or not. Other critics have called it Caribbean, South African, and "numb-tongued Kiwi." The point is, it's so bizarre and so inconsistent that you actively spend time you should be watching the movie trying to figure out "what is this strange accent supposed to be?"
Third, there are essentially only two characters in this film, and one of them isn't a character at all. Will Smith's Cypher has exactly one note: badass. He is credited for the story idea of this movie himself, and after providing another vehicle for him to make a movie with his real-life son, his secondary consideration seemed to be creating a character that makes himself look cool. The only way he seems to know how to play the "warrior with no fear" conceit is to play a character who really shows no emotion of any kind. He's robotic from beginning to end, and has absolutely no character arc. He goes from badass to injured badass.
Fourth, the other character in the film, young Kitai, is barely better. He has a character arc, but it's absolutely the one you know it's going to be less than five minutes into the film. M. Night Shyamalan took Will Smith's story idea and co-wrote the actual script, so it may sound like I'm asking for some sort of twist ending here like from the glory days before Shyamalan's name attached to a film immediately invited ridicule. But I'm really not asking for that. I'm not asking to have the rug pulled out from under me, but neither do I want to feel like I've asked Google Plots to route me to a destination that's 100 miles distant with only two turn instructions on the way.
Because of the predictability, the film generates very little tension. But it does look cool. There's some very different "future tech" design, and some well animated CG creatures. The action sequences seem more organically integrated into the movie than, say, the action of Star Trek Into Darkness (which often felt like it was checking things off a list). But, as I said earlier, After Earth commits the possibly greater sin of being boring in its lack of aspiration to anything great.
In all, I'd give it a C-. I'm not sure who I would recommend it to, but I certainly wouldn't recommend that person bother to see it in the theater.
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