M. Night Shyamalan’s Smith family picture After Earth hits theaters today, and because it’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie, or, I suspect, because it’s not very good, the reviews have been quite negative. Actually, for every 10 reviews, there’s about seven negative, and three devil’s advocate, here’s-why-it’s-not-as-bad-as-everyone-else-says reviews. I tend to believe our friend Laremy’s succinct statement on the matter, because out of all the critics, he’s the cutest (sorry, Kyle Smith):

“After Earth is f*cking terrible, Jaden Smith is not an actor, Will Smith is not a father, and the whole thing is this extended chase scene in which you want the kid to die horribly because all he does is cry like a little bitch about everything. At one point the person next to me said, “C’mon kid, just sack up”. Now if they’d called the film that, I’d have been in.”

It’d be easy to just compile some mean quotes about Jaden’s acting, but it’s too easy. It’s no fun piling on. Instead, I thought we’d use the negative reviews to do what we’ve done a few times before: cobble together the plot and let you decide for yourself. So here it is, everything I learned about After Earth, using nothing but review quotes.

A thousand years ago, we learn, humans fled the Earth after rendering what was once a paradise uninhabitable. They now reside on “Nova Prime…” (Vulture)

…where they wear a lot of white and decorate their homes with flowing sailcloths. (NY Times)

…where all garments and surfaces are dominated by a curious honeycomb pattern, and where we eat our meals with implements that resemble three Lucite chopsticks joined at one end. (Slate)

“After Earth” opens with a teenager, Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith), washing out from some kind of ranger academy. It’s a bummer because all he wants to do is please his father, Cypher (Will Smith). (NY Times)

(Nova Prime) wasn’t a hospitable place at first, as they were hunted by ferocious predators, blind but able to smell fear. Only a great soldier who’d learned to control that emotion was able to help vanquish them. -NJ.com

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All this time, I thought Will Smith was more of a milquetoast dildo, but as his recent interview with Vulture illustrates, he also has elements of the Existential Buffoon as well. Will Smith contains multitudes.

I’ve read that you believe life can be understood through patterns.
Will: I’m a student of patterns. At heart, I’m a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.

Do you see patterns too, Jaden?
Jaden: I think that there is that special equation for everything, but I don’t think our mathematics have evolved enough for us to even—I think there’s, like, a whole new mathematics that we’d have to learn to get that equation.
Will: I agree with that.
Jaden: It’s beyond mathematical. It’s, like, multidimensional mathematical, if you can sort of understand what I’m saying.

I don’t think these two are as dumb as say, Tyrese, or Stallone (your prototypical existential buffoons), but it takes a special kind of person that will jump right into their theories of “multidimensional mathematics” while out promoting a movie about an Earth “where humans haven’t set foot in a thousand years, where everything has evolved to kill humans.”

Pardon me if I don’t take notes on your amateur string theory, guy-who-chose-an-M-Night-Shyamalan-movie-over-Tarantino.

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lev radin / Shutterstock.com

Will Smith and his wiener kid are starring in an M. Night Shyamalan movie this summer, so the Will Smith’s-wiener-kids news cycle is really starting to heat up. The latest news is that Jaden, for his 15th birthday, wants to be emancipated. From the slavery of being treated as a public manifestation of his father’s fame, presumably, which doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. Jeez, you buy the kid’s way into the movie business, and the next thing you know he’s getting a big head.

Will explains that Jaden, who will be celebrating his 15th birthday in July and is close pals with 19-year-old Justin Bieber, asked for a very unique gift.
“He says, ‘Dad, I want to be emancipated.’ I know if we do this, he can be an emancipated minor, because he really wants to have his own place, like ‘Ooh,’” Will explained.

“I told him ‘you’re only 15, you don’t have a rep yet.’”

“That’s the backlash. On the other side, if kids just want to have command of their lives, I understand.”
“We generally don’t believe in punishment,” he says. “From the time Jaden was five or six, we would sit him down, and all he has to do is be able to explain why what he did was the right thing for his life. I think it’s a much more difficult question to ask someone —’Why was that right?’ — than to try to show them why it was wrong.

“Nobody wants to be wrong, all parts of yourself fight like crazy to not be wrong. So I’ll say to Jaden, ‘Why was that the right thing to do for your life?’ and if he can explain why kicking his sister in the chest was the right thing to do, we can see to it that he understands that it wasn’t so smart.” [Sun]

Oooh, please, give us more parenting advice, guy whose 14-year-old son hangs out with Justin Bieber.

In any case, we’ve got an exclusive clip from After Earth after the jump.

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Will and Jaden Smith prepare to watch The Last Airbender

Did you ever dream that one day Will Smith and his obnoxious son would team up with M. Night Shyamalan for a sci-fi film in the vein of Avatar? …Yeah, me, neither. I guess I lack a “European sensibility.” But for the rest of you paté-toting exposition lovers, today brings us the trailer for After Earth, M. Night Shyamalan’s follow up to The Last Airbender (combined RottenTomatoes score of Shyamalan’s last three movies: 47%), starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, as a future general and his son crash landed and trying to survive on a now-dangerous Earth. Check out the trailer after the jump, but I warn you, Will Smith’s accent is a Keanu-in-Dracula level train wreck. It is glorious.

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If there’s one thing in the world that annoys the ever-loving piss out of me, it’s Will Smith and his dumb wiener kids. Someone sent me this new Jaden Smith music video in the hopes of making me sad, it worked, and the only thing that’s going to make me feel better is to drag you all down into my misery. So here it is, “The Coolest,” featuring Jaden Smith rapping about “I’m the leader of the leaders on the leaderboards,” and “I been sippin on some soda and I’m chillin’ with a hottie and she’s really into yoga…” like a regular swaggy adult. Sample verse:

“So just listen while I’m spittin’ it’s the realest that you gettin’ a dese writtens if you messin’ with these stupid kids…”

Now, I’m sure there are going to be plenty of you out there who’ll say “Aw, I thought it was kinda good!” Or “leave the Smith kids alone, they’re espousing such a positive message for the kids!” And to you people I say please, shut up. Stop encouraging this, you’re ruining society. How well he can or can’t rhyme is irrelevant. I don’t want to hear about some rich 12-year-old’s “swag,” okay? Swag is for the poor and downtrodden. It’s a way for society’s forgotten to say “I’m still here and I’m kicking ass” in the face of adversity. It’s not for some rich kid to shout while he’s bragging about the lavish lifestyle that comes with being a coddled little fame prince. When you’re born rich and famous, it’s not called “swag,” it’s called being an assh*le. When you clearly didn’t earn it, at least do people the courtesy of not going on and on about how good your cake tastes, would you? It’s not class war, it’s common sense. And if you’re that kid’s parents, spoil him all you want, but it’s your godd*mned job to tell him to shut the f*ck up and read a book and stop bragging about his fancy shoes because he saw a poor kid do it.

Atlas puked.