The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Having never seen the original, I cannot make comparisons. Therefore, I am reviewing this as a standalone movie.
This film seems to be attempting something very ambitious; making commentary on the entire human race while portraying a large-scale humans vs. aliens political story intertwined with a small-scale story of a "mother and son" assisting an alien. Unfortunately, I feel that the director had good intentions, but studio executives intervened, forcing Hollywood-esque, large scale scenes of destruction while in another breath trying to portray the aliens as peaceful. This indecisiveness continues throughout the entire movie, repeatedly switching from potentially brilliant scenes of dialogue commenting on somewhat controversial topics, to brainless scenes of impressive CGI with little plot value. This makes it impossible to view the movie as a fun, light popcorn flick, yet hard to take seriously.
Acting does the job, with Jennifer Connelly playing the worried mother/genius scientist well enough without being given anything particularly testing. Keanu Reeves plays an alien who, with no connection or remorse for the human race, shows no emotion. He is suited perfectly to this role. Jaden Smith is looking set to become a good actor, as surprisingly, he is given some of the more challenging scenes in terms of showing emotion. John Cleese's small yet pivotal role makes for an excellent scene; naturally there is an element of comedy in his performance which contrasts excellently with Keanu Reeves' deadpan character. One person who stood out in a negative way to me was Kathy Bates as the president's stand-in. I don't doubt that it was the script and direction that caused this, but her character was so stereotypical of a view on American government, and her script, delivery and development were on par with a Disney channel movie. There was a few scenes that came across as very cheesy and the result of lazy writing, unfortunately including the climax, which could not have been more "Hollywood" had it tried.
In conclusion, this is a dissapointing, but not by any means awful, attempt at a film that could have been very good. 6/10.