You know how some people complain about movies and they ask, "What was the point?" We all know that that's an unfair question, ultimately. Do stories need to have a point to be good stories? No, not necessarily. Star Wars doesn't have a "point," per se, but it's still engaging and well-told. Even if The Man From Earth was either of those things, it wouldn't matter. Because this isn't just a story, it's a film where we watch a man tell a story to a bunch of other people. With that kind of structure, you'd better hope to hell that it's a story worth telling. But this film seems to think that it's inherently interesting and doesn't have to do any more work in that area.
The real problem here is that none of the characters behave like human beings would in this situation. Imagine that one of your closest friends, a guy you've known for a decade, is moving away. On his last night in town, he invites you and some of your other friends over to tell you that he's actually 14,000 years old. The primary question is not, as the film thinks, "Would you believe him?" The question is, "Would you get emotionally involved in the story to the point where you're either sobbing or furious?" The answer, I'm guessing, is no. Because it's just a story. The film pretends that the other characters don't know whether or not to believe, but their insanely exaggerated reactions clearly indicate that they believe every word he's saying for some reason. This guy gives no evidence other than his word that anything he's saying is true. So why would any of the other people react to it as anything but a story told by their friend? There's no damning piece of evidence early on that keeps them interested. They literally say, "Let's just take him at his word for shits and giggles." The entire conceit of the film is poorly justified.
And then of course there's the laughably awful performances (especially from the biology professor guy), the lazy direction, and the production value. I get that it's a low-budget film and you can only do so much, but put some effort in, would you? I couldn't believe this was made in 2007. It looks at least a decade older. If the script was better, I wouldn't care.
Yeah. The script. When you watch this movie, you don't watch The Man From Earth. You watch The Man From Earth jerk off to its inflated sense of self-importance. And even that would be so bad if the story was the least bit interesting. It's like they came up with the premise and found it alone so fascinating that they didn't think it was worth expanding on. So, there's a guy that's 14,000 years old. Okay. So what? The movie consists of nothing but this guy telling his friends about moments in history. He doesn't give them any insight into those events, he just says, "Oh yeah, I was there. Moving on." Even worse, the movie goes out of its way to explain that this guy (whose name is - no shit - John Oldman) isn't extraordinary in any other way. He doesn't have superhuman abilities, he's not hyper-intelligent, he's just old. So why are they telling this story if he's so unexceptional? If he's just some guy, then there's no point to telling a story about him.
Right, back to that idea. "No point." This is a film that's nothing but dialogue between characters who are confined to a single location. I love stories like that. In this film, the dialogue is hackneyed and eye-roll-inducing, the characters are completely undercooked and portrayed by terrible actors, and the reason that they keep themselves confined to that location isn't rational. All you have left is the story, and nothing about it is the least bit compelling or provocative. The final scene is so hilariously contrived that it seems to come from an alternate-universe version of The Twilight Zone, a universe in which that show was horrible and dumb. Luckily, our universe has the good version of it. But for our sins, we have this movie as well.