A glance at After Earth credits shows how much from top to bottom a vanity family affair it is even omitting an uncredited lion’s share of direction by the story originator, co-writer/-producer and adult star. Whereas with much the same demographic in its sights, semi-John Wyndham-inspired Pacific Rim features at least lots of action-toy robots battling, the Smith-Pinkett showcase skimps on effects. Whether good or not good at comedy, male head of the real-life clan Will is bad as steely dramatic heroes, and the most charitable assessment of son Jaden is that the fifteen-year-old has been stage-parented into this second co-share with dad and should be left to merely rapping, dancing and elder brothering singer sister Willow. Official director M. Night Shyamalan has not impressed since a début last century.

The hundred minutes does not enhance reputations or entrance audiences despite, or because of, pretentions to being larger than pure adventure (after retooling father Smith’s ur-wilderness camping trip). Nor will it succeed as a promotional springboard for franchising auxiliary items, including a projected series of spin-off novels.

Not original though not terrible, the basic storyline embraces coming of age, father and son’s coming together to bond, a coming to terms with catastrophic past events, and overcoming evolutionary built-in protective fear, not to mention environmentalism and survival. Touching all these bases proves all too much and all too predictable.

SPOILER ALERT

Will’s General Cypher Raige is a military commander famed for fearless “ghosting” but a cipher as a father and, assumedly, as a husband even though wise wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo) adores him if possible more than everyone else. Subsequent flashbacks reveal the selfless love of their also brave daughter Senshi (Zoë Kravitz), killed at nineteen in that catastrophe.

More fearful of than loving this absent, duty-driven father he does not know very well, Cadet Kitai (Jaden) is slight at thirteen but stands out among older United Ranger Corps aspirants. Still, astute Velan (Glenn Morshower) refuses him promotion to the rangerhood he seeks to impress the father who has returned home to planet Nova Prime to retire after one last routine mission. At the wife’s urging, he takes the son along on this voyage to a base to which a spacecraft transports a caged Ursa.

More louse-looking than bearish despite the name, these creatures are the frumious mortal enemies of mankind. Blind, the predators track by sniffing the pheromone secreted in fear, hence leading to chicken-soup pseudo-Zen mantras like “Danger is real, fear is a choice.”

The craft is disabled in an asteroid shower and crash-lands on Earth, abandoned a millennium ago when shortsighted humanity rendered the place uninhabitable and since then harboring feral species just waiting to tear each other and these soft returnees to pieces. Despite the harsh conditions, however, they are capable of anthropomorphic feelings such as gratitude in the case of a condor mother that, with the disappointing and equally brief Ursa, manages the best acting around.

Other crew members dead upon impact and dad’s both legs broken, junior needs to brandish the latter’s Swiss-army-knife multi-weapon and cover two hundred kilometers to the ship’s separated tail section housing the possibly now freed enemy beast, medical supplies, and the beacon with which to summon immediate aid to save sire and son. Efficient cool, Cypher directs “Kit” through hologram technology but can do so only up to a point, at which the youngster must prove his salt on his own.

Tropical Costa Rican locations might harbor the menaces of Predator, but flat dialogue and acting sink this hunt to the deplorable level of Predator 2. Let the poor boy go back to being just a kid.

(Released by Columbia Pictures and rated “PG-13” for sci-fi action violence and some disturbing images.)