The Man from Earth - 2007

"The Epitome of Good Science Fiction" was a user's comment on Internet Movie Database. I wonder how true that was. So, I watched the movie. I always like special effects, mysteries and unpredictable movies. Such movie with such name,attracted the me, at first.

Preview
Professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith) is loading his stuffs into a truck. Soon, his colleagues arrive and query him for resigning from his position in the University without informing them. They (Harry, Edith, Dan and Sandy) thought of giving him a farewell party which is later joined by another friend, Art and his student Linda.

When they are in the house, they start to ask John about his reason of resigning as well as leaving the place once and for all. John seems reluctant to answer and tell nothing much and denying every possibility his ex-colleagues can think of. All of them still think that John is hiding something from them and they all think that John needs help from the professional.

Eventually, John surprises them by indicating that he is a caveman, a man from the Upper Paleolithic. He moves on every decade or so, just when people notice his lack of aging. Obviously, none of them believes in him. While some of them find it is absurd, they keep on questioning John to find flaw in his 'story'.

The Story
The Man From Earth was a story from the beginning until the end. A story as in reading a book except that there were people who were reading the story out loud. Pardon me for being nonsense but I felt like I was hearing a book talking. Action speaks louder than word and there was no action in this movie at all.

Apparently, there was no story line in The Man From Earth, for me. It was like listening to a person trying to explain that he was almost immortal while his friends were there to prove that he was just an ordinary person.

The Effects
No effects at all from a movie made in the year 2007. The actors and the actresses were talking throughout the movie. The Man From Earth could be one of the lowest budget movies. Or maybe it WAS the lowest budget movie ever made. I would have expected that some kind of visualization appeared each time John tried to explain how he lived through his 14,000 years on earth. At least that would have made The Man From Earth a bit worth while to watch.

Verdict
Hopeless. Maybe I did not know how to appreciate The Man From Earth. I would have thought it might be more exciting to watch than The Day The Earth Stood Still when I first saw the movie title. Yet 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes into the movie and until the end of the movie, all I heard and saw was people talking, talking and talking.

As I mentioned, The Man From Earth could be exciting if it brought us back to the journey that John went through instead of just making some statements.

By KH Tan