![]() One of Smith's main assets, his physicality, is shockingly diluted here: His character is sidelined – and flatlined, performance-wise – by spending the majority of the film trapped in a crash-landed spaceship with broken legs, directing his son via voiceover on a mission to save both their lives. ![]() 6 quick takeaways from this year's Oscar nominationsĪfter Earth is a movie with its roots in nepotism, a blatant attempt to make his son Jaden Smith the star of his own sci-fi thriller.There should be an Oscar for playing a real person.The case for nixing the Oscars' best international feature category.We love the Oscars – but we need to talk about those awards ceremony changes.A full list of nominees for this year's awards.The common denominator among them is the dominant mode Smith is working with here: charm. See also Hitch, Aladdin, and Six Degrees of Separation, all variations on The Fresh Prince, albeit in different genres and tones. Tea Cake freaks out at the prospect of having to "perform," and Smith milks several minutes of exaggerated physical comedy and facial expressions, and yes, noises and ad libs, in this set piece.) (A prolonged sequence involves Tea Cake accompanying Zora to a sperm bank, where he distracts the receptionist by pretending to make a donation of his own so Zora can sneak off to find records on her birth father. Zora discovers her mom, played by Goldberg, had her via a sperm donor – but in the few scenes Tea Cake is in, the broad humor is on full display. The latter is a secondary part (Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson get top billing) playing Tea Cake, the childhood friend and wannabe love interest of Nia Long's Zora. Within Smith's oeuvre, the Fresh Prince mode dominates in other roles like Oscar the fish in the animated film Shark Tale and the 1993 movie Made in America. He is the sun, and everyone else revolves around him, no matter how begrudgingly. (His persistence in cracking wise at their expense doesn't help, either.) No matter, though. And yet, anyone as boisterous as him is bound to run up against some resistance against others who tend to be wound up a bit more tightly – namely, Carlton and Uncle Phil. His effortless charm makes him a magnet for most people within his orbit, whether it's the ladies, his younger cousin Ashley and her friends, his Aunt Viv (usually), or the other kids at his tony prep school.
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