The original Solaris makes 2001 look like Sesame Street; unfortunately the remake makes Sesame Street look like the original Solaris. This is a great shame. I love the original. I hate the remake. It's an idiot's guide, everything has been boiled down and battered and chewed up so that a younger and less patient audience can easily digest it. If you wanted to remake Solaris as an episode of the Twilight Zone this is what you would boil the story down to. The original had a love story in it but it was not a love story.<br /><br />And the original was a piece of cinema. It told its story in pictures. In the remake, once Kelvin arrives at Solaris, no one shuts up. There's a constant yammering explanation of what is going on. Everything has to be explained. It's the difference between 2001 and 2010. Sometimes mystery is better.<br /><br />Forgetting the original, does it work as a stand alone movie? Again, it's not visual enough, you could do the script as it stands on the radio and no one would be lost. As for the acting? Clooney is Clooney, nice looking and can move about without bumping into the furniture, but there's always something missing from the man on screen: he lacks emotional weight. Natasha McElhone? Awful. The flashback scenes where she and Clooney are falling in love are an embarrassment. It's as though she's trying to break the world grinning record. Then she stops grinning and you know things can't be good. And as for Jeremy Davis? I think the man's been watching Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now once too often. A bad second-hand reminder of someone else's performance.<br /><br />Plus points? The photography's nice. And it could have been longer, which might have made it a different and better film; but, given the film it has turned out to be, thank god it's as short as it is.