Given that the always-on-the-ball Lisa Marie Bowman already beat me to the punch with this one on these virtual “pages,” I won’t waste too much of your time, dear reader, on my post-mortem analysis of the decidedly dull, wannabe-mystical-and-“empowering” mess that is Will Smith’s latest vanity project, After Earth, and instead merely remark upon some — -well, remarkable facts.

The first being that precisely two scribes here at TTSL actually saw this thing, and my best guess is that we both saw it in empty theaters because, according to box office receipts from the past weekend, nobody else went. So Sony/Columbia owes us a debt of thanks. And maybe some free passes to some future release of theirs.

Secondly, I’d like to state for the record that this film actually isn’t the abysmal and abject failure so many have quickly taken to labeling it as being so much as it’s just thoroughly predictable and almost relentlessly dull. 1,000 years after the evacuation of the planet due to largely unspecified but apparently quite serious environmental devastation,  emotionally distant military bad-ass-with-focus-group-tested -name Cypher Raige (Smith) and his son, Kitai (Smith’s kid Jaden) crash-land on the supposedly uninhabitable rock and must find a way to — yawn — survive while also learning to — yawn again — finally form the deep bonds of trust that all parents and their offspring are, y’know, supposed  to have.

There’s a bog-standard “warrior monk” mentality that runs through this picture that confuses stoicism for honor and nonchalance for dignity, and while Smith seems to be ill at ease with the material, he’s really got no one to blame but himself given that the film’s plot was apparently hatched in his own mind and the whole thing’s a family affair, with the former “Fresh Prince” not only starring in it, supposedly having a hand in scripting it, and casting his son to appear alongside him, but with his wife,  Jada Pinkett Smith, grabbing a producer’s credit, as well. And while it might be tempting to lay a pretty fair share of the blame for this overwrought snoozer on M. Night Shyamalan’s doorstep, as well — especially given his thoroughly uninspiring track record over the past decade or so —  the fact is that he’s pretty much acting as a director/co-writer-for-hire here, his fifteen minutes as Hollywood’s “next big thing” having apparently — finally! — run their course.

And weird as it sounds considering my disdain for pretty much anything he’s ever had his name attached to in the past, Shyamalan actually acquits himself reasonably well here. His direction doesn’t especially stand out in any respect, mind you, but you know what they say about how tough it is to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. All in all, I got the distinct impression that he was at least trying to inject some life into some pretty goddamn listless proceedings.

His efforts certainly aren’t enough, though. LMB’s right that the film’s environmental message feels both heavy-handed and tacked on — shit, at least Birdemic was so hilariously inept at doing more or less the same thing that you couldn’t help but love it —but its New Agey emotional subtext is even more clumsy and ham-handed than its ecological one,  and to me that’s where the film’s most egregious sermonizing is to be found.

Parents should love their kids and be nice to them? Wow, ya don’t say.

Anyway, there’s probably not much point belaboring the obvious any further here — I’ve never been a big fan of piling on, and as I said, I don’t find  this flick so much actively bad as it is just dull, preachy, and without purpose apart from demonstrating to the world what an awesome, caring, understanding bunch the Smith/Pinkett clan is (after all, they’d never treat their kids like this in real life, right?). So there ya go —  and there it goes, since all indications are that After Earth will probably “enjoy” a well-deserved short-lived run on our nation’s movie screens before slowly dying on the home video and cable TV vine. Hang onto your cash and catch it on TNT or TBS some Saturday afternoon a year from now.