Scott Derrickson�s remake of the science fiction classic proves that splashing mega bucks on a picture doesn�t necessarily mean bigger thrills.

Star rating: **
Dir: Scott Derrickson
With: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates.

SCOTT Derrickson's remake of the science fiction classic proves that splashing mega bucks on a picture doesn't necessarily mean bigger thrills. Robert Wise's 1951 original might have looked as though it was made by a crack team of Blue Peter presenters with special permission to let rip with the washing-up bottles, but it packed a considerable wow factor. This 2008 version prompts, at most, a shrug.

Derrickson should at least be mentioned in dispatches for boldly going where no director has gone before in attempting a remake. Given Wise's film is almost 60 years old, revisiting it could have been a fascinating exercise, a chance to explore what a spaceman who fell to Earth might warn us about these days. Recession? Global warming? Allowing Graham Norton to host Eurovision?

This rebooted The Day the Earth Stood Still goes for the most significant though least sexy of the three options, the green one. It begins in 1928 in an obscure, 2001: A Space Odyssey, kind of way. Keanu Reeves, no stranger to playing strangers in a strange land after his roles in The Matrix and Johnny Mnemonic, is in the Arctic when he comes across a strange globe of light.

No sooner has he, and we, begun to ponder the significance of this than Derrickson cuts to present day Princeton where Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) is teaching a class.

This Helen is a world away from her 1951 counterpart. Both are widows, but while Patricia Neal was a secretary, Jennifer Connelly is a top flight scientist complete with white coat and everything. Her stepson, played by Jaden Smith (Will Smith's son), calls her Helen rather than mom, and he has about as many "ishoos" with her and his late father as he has video games. It's all terribly modern.

After his puzzling beginning, Derrickson steps up the pace as the unidentified flying object hurtles towards Earth.

Landing in Central Park, the ship has gone through quite an upgrade, and makes for an impressive sight as it spews thunderbolts of light and clouds of space dust.

Yet it's here that one first gets the sense that more might turn out to be less. As the ship comes to a halt and Klaatu (Reeves) and Gort the robot - four times taller than the original - emerges, there isn't the same visceral thrill as there was with Wise's picture.

That's the funny thing about science fiction: the classier it tries to be in terms of special effects, the less of an impact it has.

Call it the Doctor Who law of diminishing returns. After all, can the new, improved Doctor Who, brilliant as it is, send you scurrying behind the sofa like the creaky old black and white model could?

Klaatu is given the kind of warm welcome for which the Earth has become notorious in science fiction, and before long he is face to face with Kathy Bates's defence secretary to explain what he is doing here. The star of Misery and Fried Green Tomatoes manages to keep a commendably straight face throughout, as does everyone in this lugubrious picture. Even John Cleese, playing a professor with a Nobel prize for "biological altruism" (I checked: it exists) is po-faced.

When it comes to taking his role seriously, no-one can hold a light saber to our Keanu. Reeves is one of the more interesting actors around today, his choice of roles running from the inspired (A Scanner Darkly) to the awful (The Lake House). His spaceman is a faintly sinister, inscrutable character who regards earthlings with contempt for their treatment of the planet.

Helen calls him "it" rather than he, and you can see her point. "What were you before you were human?" she asks Klaatu.

"Different," says the tight-lipped one. No one else could have played Klaatu as convincingly.

Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) has the chance to deploy oodles more special effects as Klaatu's warnings are ignored. With the skies growing darker it is up to Helen and her son to convince Klaatu that this heap of dirt we call home might just be worth saving.

This is the cue for much emoting on the parts of Connelly and young Smith, with the latter turning in a sobbing scene that makes Gwynnie at the Oscars look like a model of restraint. The seminal moment when the planet stands still is well handled, although London seems to be frozen at some point in 1962 rather than 2008.

Underwhelming is not a word that sits well with science fiction. Derrickson's picture has its moments, but apart from the SFX, the updating of the Helen character, and a few sly digs at the media, you are left wondering why he went to all this trouble.

It's like travelling zillions of miles through space and time only to land in Bognor. Beam it back up, Scotty.