I wanted to really love After Earth, simply because I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic movies and sci-fi, but I just found myself somewhat bored by it all. Jaden Smith overacts a good bit and, while his parkour skills are somewhat impressive, they are not enough to rescue this film from falling into the pit of contrived sci-fi stories and bad acting. I love Will Smith and typically enjoy his movies. I'm sure it was his dream come true to work with his son on a film where he wrote the story, but I just wasn't a fan. So much of the film was CG and it wasn't very impressive on DVD. Perhaps it looked better on the Blu-ray version, but I haven't seen it so I can't speak to that. Also, I was slowly driven crazy by the contrived accent that the actors used – some weird blend of Irish, Southern and I don't know what that just seemed unnecessary and ridiculous.
As far as special features go, there's a featurette on Jaden and Will Smith, a short one focusing on the cast and crew while on location, one on the colorful locales used for the film and, finally, one that focused on the XPrize After Earth Challenge, which included the winning team's video submission. It's all pretty basic stuff and you can take it or leave it.
Overall, I can't really recommend After Earth to anyone other than hardcore Will and Jaden Smith fans. Sure, it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, but that's not saying much these days. If you are in the mood for a sci-fi flick, there are better ones out there. It's not the worst film for sure, but not worth more than a Netflix rent.
