A discussion elsewhere on the ‘tubes this morning reminded me of this, so I decided to dig it out of my archives. Short version: people complaining that something sounds silly got it coming right back at them because they have no clue what they’re talking about.

I haven’t yet seen the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Generally speaking, I haven’t been terribly speedy about seeing movies as they come out; sometimes, I just wait until they’re available on mplayer. The reviews have not been kind, but on the flipside, not all the reviews have been particularly insightful. To wit, here is Alonso Duralde at msnbc.com:

The new “Day” can’t be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season’s biggest laughs.

OK, bring it.

My personal favorite? Astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) takes alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to see a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and notes that her colleague was honored “for his work in biological altruism.” What would that entail, exactly? Helping frogs cross the street?

The sound you hear is my palm hitting my forehead, rather emphatically, followed by a howl from deep within my thorax: “Learn to [expletive deleted] Google, you [anatomically uncomplimentary compound noun]!” Just because Chris Tucker of the Daily Mail can’t do a simple web search doesn’t give you an excuse.

Claudia Puig at USA Today is no better:

What, exactly, would that entail? It sounds like something Cleese and his fellow Monty Python wits might have dreamed up.

You ignorant [epithet derived from SF television show]. Why don’t you go [verb unsuitable for a family blog] with Dave White, who apparently thinks that the mere mention of an actual scientific subject makes a movie instant MST3K fodder.

In Scientific American, Michael Shermer gives the movie a mostly positive review, and indicates that “biological altruism” is a real subject. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times is also mostly happy with the film, and he doesn’t crack wise about the “biological altruism” business, though I’m not sure about his grasp of it:

Aside from Klaatu and Gort, the “Day” team claims to have retained the original’s snappy catchphrase, “Klaatu barada nikto,” but it’s so hard to hear that viewers will be forgiven if they miss it. Also still around is the charming blackboard scene, in which Klaatu solves an equation for Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), a man smart enough to have won the nonexistent but indisputably high-minded Nobel Prize for biological altruism.

Supposing that Barnhardt did work in the field of kin recognition, evolutionary ecology or some such topic which was honoured with a Nobel Prize, it wouldn’t be “the Nobel Prize for biological altruism”, but rather the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or, possibly, Economics (if Barnhardt’s research focused on, say, evolutionary game theory).

MTV’s Kurt Loder calls the film “boldly mediocre” but says that “biological altruism” is “a very Pythonian name for an actual subject of scientific inquiry”. Stephen D. Greydanus has a similar attitude. The recapper at the Agony Booth was also underwhelmed, by this part and by the rest of the movie:

Helen explains that Karl won the Nobel “for his work in biological altruism.” This sounds like something goofy they made up to make Karl sound noble, but in fact it’s a real field of philosophic study that investigates why, in times of limited resources, individual organisms throughout the animal kingdom occasionally produce fewer offspring (which, in Darwinian terms, is self-abnegation) for the good of the community. Which is great, but since it’s not explained, most of the audience is left to think that it’s something goofy the filmmakers made up.

So, I guess you can still dislike the movie after you’ve looked up the relevant science.