Oh dear. What a turkey.

Well, I guess it did have a lot to live up to: the original, 1950s version is a bona fide sci-fi classic and came with a brilliantly humanistic message in an era when the Cold War paranoia evident in movies like ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’ was more the norm.

The original movie still stands up, and is a model in how to make a sci-fi work on all sorts of levels: it has a moral centre and a real message, the special effects are effective but used sparingly, and most importantly, it works as a drama.

Despite what the new version’s producers say in the inevitable ‘making of’, it’s evident that they’ve learnt absolutely nothing from the original version. Their 2009 movie, despite having a sizable budget thrown at it, fails in every conceivable way.

Firstly, and it has to be said, casting Keanu Reeves as the alien may have been someone’s idea of a brilliant idea, it’s a gigantic mistake. While Reeves’ non-acting does have a certain robotic feeling, he’s unable to muster any empathy in his audience, which means we don’t feel sorry for him or the predicament he’s in, having to decide the future (or not) of the human race.

The film sacrifices narrative and script and subtle creepiness with really dumb screenwriting, and a bevy of special effects that, while overwhelming, are quite obviously CGI-generated, even to the amateur eye.

Blu-ray emphasises the film’s CGI crimes.

When are those dullards who control budgets and projects in Hollywood going to realise that it’s possible to make a great film if some intelligence is thrown at it? (Take the latest Star Trek, for instance.)

Being Blu-ray, for those who do enjoy the film and want to spend some quality time on extras, there are quite a few. Standard stuff includes audio commentary, deleted scenes and a bunch of featurettes. More interesting is the ‘Build Your own GORT’ feature, a game that allows the viewer to build the alien robot out of miscellaneous parts.

But the only really great things about this new ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ are the sound and vision, which are astoundingly crisp and clear. It’s one of the best sounding Blu-ray discs I’ve heard so far, with incredibly deep bass extension. The picture is also quite amazing, apart from the aforementioned CGI. Generally, new films on Blu-ray are looking so spiffing that I’m even debating whether they’re worth seeing at the movies, where they generally look worse! GARY STEEL

2.5 Stars

Note: This comes with a second disc, a DVD, for some reason, but lacks the third disc of the pictured US version, which includes the original 1953 version as well.