Here on Earth Review (2000)
Director: Mark Piznarski
Writer: Michael Seitzman
Starring: Leelee Sobieski, Chris Klein, Josh Hartnett, Bruce Greenwood, Annette O’Toole, Michael Rooker
Release Date: March 24, 2000
Runtime: 1 hour 36 minutes

Continuing onward with the Leelee Sobieski rewatch series, Here on Earth sits near the bottom of her filmography and earns its place there for its, let’s just say lackluster, story. It isn’t Night Train bad (I don’t think she could’ve made a film worse than that turd) but it is a deeply frustrating film for reasons that have very little to do with the performances and almost everything to do with the characters those performances are stuck playing.

The setup is a standard romantic drama love triangle. Kelley Morse (Chris Klein) is a wealthy prep school kid who is clearly an ass who thinks he’s better than everyone. He and his lackeys scroll into a small poor town, head into a diner where he obnoxiously hits on Samantha (Leelee Sobieski) the waitress (her family owns the diner). Samantha’s boyfriend, Jasper (Josh Hartnett) and his buddies are there and have words with the preps. They they get into a car race where they end up destroying the diner. Somehow, all of this begins to endear Samantha to Kelley, and thus the movie’s downfall begins fairly early.

The main problem with this movie is Kelley. He’s an arrogant, dismissive jerk from the moment he appears on screen and the film never convincingly sells us on why he should not be. A Walk to Remember (which I compare this movie too only realizing after the fact that this film actually released a couple of years before A Walk to Remember) does this same story better in almost every respect because it earns the transformation of its similar character: he starts out a jerk and ends up a decent human being and you believe it. Kelley never really gets there. He makes a few token gestures in the general direction of growth for a brief moment, but at his core he remains the same smug, entitled person who rolled into town and started trouble. The film asks you to root for him to get the girl and I never bought in for a single scene. Who would? He’s the guy in most movies you’d be rooting for to finally get his ass kicked, not steal the girl.

Samantha isn’t any easier to like. Leelee does what she can with the role and her performance is fine, better than the material deserves in places, but the character herself is hard to defend. She has a boyfriend who hasn’t done anything wrong (besides be a dumbass who raced and endangered folks). She starts spending time with Kelley behind his back and falls for him. And at one point she is making out with this guy in front of Jasper’s best friend, which is not the behavior of someone you are meant to be charmed by. Jasper is the most sympathetic person in the film and the film keeps treating him like an obstacle to be cleared rather than a person who is being genuinely wronged.

The A Walk to Remember comparison is worth spelling out, because while it came out later it is the better known film. Both films are teen romantic dramas with similar structures. Both involve a somewhat self-important male lead and a female character the story is really about. The difference is that A Walk to Remember earns its emotional payoff because the characters grow and the relationship feels genuine. Here on Earth wants the same emotional weight but has not done the work to earn it. By the time the film’s third act twist arrives I had already stopped caring about both Samantha and was actively wishing that her and Kelley would both be killed. That means the twist lands with a thud rather than the gut punch it is clearly going for.

This is one of those films that makes you feel the waste of a decent cast. Josh Hartnett in particular is given almost nothing to do except look hurt. Leelee deserved better material than this at this stage of her career, and she would go on to get it the following here (with three of her best films).

Skip Here on Earth unless you are doing your own Leelee Sobieski deep dive. Even then, go in with low expectations.

Here on Earth gets a two out of five: FORGETTABLE.