A while ago I visited a close friend of mine at his parents' home. On the wall next to the front door hung a drawing that my buddy's youngest brother drew of himself. I happened to be looking at it when my friend's father walked by so he asked me what i thought of it. Art, mostly in traditional museum-style mediums, usually does not interest me. As he'd approached me, I was, in that very moment, trying to figure out why that was. When I admitted this he explained to me that the focus of art was problem solving. Every artist, in their chosen design, is providing an answer to a question.

I have not seen the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, but they both present the same question: Is the human race worth saving? Frankly, the humans portrayed in the film do not. Keanu Reeves' Clatu lands his ship in Central Park and is promptly shot the moment he makes contact with his first human emissary, Jennifer Connelly's Helen Benson. Immediately afterwards the universe's most ULTIMATE BADASS DEFENSE SYSTEM walks (yes, walks) his giant self onto the screen and proceeds to shut down everything with his almighty orange eye. The humans in the film seem surprised by this, but even before Clatu's ship landed some unknown force (most likely the ULTIMATE BADASS DEFENSE SYSTEM) shut down all of the United States' satellite missile systems. It's a bad thing when you find yourself rooting for the giant, ebony, orange-eyed cyclops against mankind.

However, maybe that's what supposed to happen. It's not really the entire world trying to imprison and interrogate Clatu as much as it is Kathy Bates' Regina Jackson who happens to be the "eyes and ears of the president." The president himself never makes an appearance so either they weren't sure if the movie would be released before Dubya left office or all of the other impersonators were busy lampooning him in other fare. But the military-heavy persistence of his policies ring through in Regina's decisions so heavy that I actually cheered as Clatu easily escaped.

This film as a philosophical approach works much better than as an actual story. Too often characters were working desperately against reason in order to advance the plot. Why was Helen Benson able to sneak her phone past our military installments? Why were the scientists, who'd been summoned by NASA, in flimsy-looking helicopters hovering over the pre-crash site where this foreign object was threatening to wipe out Manhattan? Why were the scientists allowed to approach the giant glowing orb before any government approved military emissary had been chosen? Why did Regina Jackson think she, in any way, could imprison a creature that had come off the same ship as the ULTIMATE BADASS DEFENSE SYSTEM? And why was a character in a movie named Regina Jackson portrayed by a white person? Less than one-third of the way through the movie I had to stop asking 'why?' or I might have walked out.

In order for this movie to answer the question of whether the human race deserved to survive, I threw out the story. So I ignored the harsh treatment Helen Benson's son Jacob Benson (Jaden Smith) doled on his adopted mother even though it was clear the answer to his behavior would factor into the final solution. Instead, the dialogue between select characters throughout the film served as the truest way of discerning the answers desired. Frankly, they should have diverted a LOT of the $250 million budget into writers who focused less on CG and more on compelling discussion. Had they done so, the brilliant John Cleese would have had a lot more than six and a half onscreen minutes to make his oh-so-eloquent point on humanity.

Does this work of art answer the question sufficiently? That's up to you to decide. But as entertainment, is this movie worth the price of admission ($13 on IMAX)? I don't think so. But I'd gladly pay a matinee price to see the ULTIMATE BADASS DEFENSE SYSTEM in action again. He/It is easily the most fascinating character in the movie as the shimmery sheen of his obsidian-colored skin hides the most dangerous aspect of his/its techniques.