There's a list of movies that should never get the remake treatment, no matter how desperate Hollywood may be for story ideas. "Gone With the Wind" comes to mind. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," "The Godfather," and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" would be a few more.

I think we can now safely add "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to the list.

This remake of the 1951 science fiction classic movie about a humanoid alien and his robot who descend upon the Earth to warn mankind of its impending doom unless its people can basically start getting along. The original film has an obvious and ever-present feeling of fear and suspicion regarding the goings-on at the time, including the Cold War and the development of atomic weaponry. It's more social commentary than extraterrestrial terror.

Visually, the original is a token of its time — bad space saucer images, silly-looking costumes and simplistic portrayals of the human race at that time as fear-mongering, conservative people who were reluctant to the idea of the unification of people regardless of nationalities. Actually, when one thinks about it this way, the film's portrayal of society probably rings truer today than most of us would be comfortable admitting.

When the humanoid Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) says, "I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason," it's hard for one to not recall the 9/11 aftermath.

The 2008 version of "Earth" is typical of most reworkings of old-school "genre classics," which the original would have to be classified as. That is, style takes priority over substance.

While the computer-generated graphics in the remake blow the original's out of the water, there's not nearly as much going on underneath the glittery surface as there was back in 1951.

For one thing, the original film let us know relatively quickly what the saucer was doing on Earth, and what Klaatu and his indestructible robot Gort were trying to accomplish. The new "Earth" hems and haws and dances around the subject, presumably in the hopes of being "mysterious." Unfortunately, it's way more annoying than mysterious, and the film seems to be stuck in neutral for most of the journey.

Another drawback of the remake is its star, Keanu Reeves. Yes, he enjoys a certain amount of sci-fi credibility for his role in the "Matrix" series, but it's no secret that franchise owed its massive success infinitely more to its stylistic action than to its acting. Acting has never been Reeves' strongest attribute — which some might consider a dealbreaker for someone labeling himself an actor.

Here, he manages to show slightly more emotion than a pizza box. His stoic, expressionless delivery wears thin quickly (i.e. immediately), and the film suffers predictably from it. Like its star, the "Earth" remake has no soul to speak of — I felt as if I was simply witnessing a series of loosely connected scenes rather than a cohesive statement on the human race, as I did in the original.

Watching Reeves and co-stars Jennifer Connelly ("We can change, just give us a chance!" she begs Klaatu) and Will Smith's son Jaden try to save the Earth's people, I found myself not being able to invest enough into the film to care whether they succeeded or not — despite being among those who would suffer the fatal consequences were they to fail.

I don't know about the Earth as a whole, but watching this remake, I was ready to be "still." Like, asleep still.

Joel Sensenig is news editor of the Review Times. He thinks that anyone needing to see a motionless Earth in film should check out the original, which is airing on AMC these days.