‘After Earth’ scores badly with critics

Will Smith’s reputation is seriously at stake. But after the trashing his latest film, ‘After Earth’ (out June 6 in the UAE), has received from critics, the usually-dependable actor and producer can at least take comfort in the fact that it’s not done as badly as director M. Night Shyamalan’s last film, ‘The Last Airbender’.

Rotten Tomatoes, the website which aggregates reviews by critics and gives it a rating, has given a 12 per cent “rotten” rating. By contrast, Smith’s last film with his son Jaden, ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’, received a 66 per cent “fresh” score in 2006. Current box office leader ‘Fast & Furious 6’ has 76 per cent while ‘Star Trek Into the Darkness’ scored 87 per cent and Robert Downey Jr’s ‘Iron Man 3’ is at 78 per cent.

The website, which keeps tracks of reviews written by top critics from around the world, awards a percentage depending on the positive or negative reviews a film has received. If the positive reviews make up 60 per cent or more, the film is considered “fresh” or “rotten” if it falls below that percentage. Of course, these ratings do not reflect the films’ box office performances.

Shyamalan’s fortunes on the website have been steadily on the wane ever since his critically-acclaimed ‘The Sixth Sense’ in 1999 with 85 per cent. His follow-up, ‘Unbreakable’ (2000) earned 68 per cent while ‘Signs’ with Mel Gibson in 2002 received 74 per cent. Shyamalan’s live-action interpretation of the animated series ‘Avatar’, called ‘The Last Airbender’, received a paltry six per cent rating in 2010, with critics pointing out the director’s inability to engage fans and his poor use of 3D. ‘The Happening’, Shyamalan’s mind-numbing thriller in 2008 starring Mark Wahlberg, has a 17 per cent score.

Smith, who is believed to have come up with the idea for ‘After Earth’, apparently approached Shyamalan to direct. The post-apocalyptic drama tells the story of a soldier who crash lands with his son on Earth a thousand years in the future. The son sets out on a dangerous mission as the wounded father watches and guides from the sidelines, a parallel to the father-son duo’s journey in Hollywood.

Critics, it seems, are not touched.