City of Ember

This is going to be a hard movie to review. City of Ember is the most visually exciting film I've seen this year since Hellboy II. I don't think there was a scene in this movie where I wasn't interested or captivated by what I was seeing on the screen. The movie also features a strong cast including Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. And yet, I must admit that while my eyes and senses were completely captivated, my heart and my brain was less so. One more draft of the screenplay, and this movie would have been perfect.

It's hard not to gush about the film's production design. The movie is set in a massive underground city that is a triumph of set and visual design. There were a lot of times looking at the film that I was reminded of the sci-fi works of Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys). Maybe a little bit of Tim Burton was in there, too. This is a movie that gives us something new to look at in just about every scene. The first time I saw the underground city of Ember, I instantly became excited. I became even more excited when I heard the story behind this city. Apparently, the end of the world happened some 200 years ago. How this came about, the movie never goes into detail, but from the flashback sequence early on, I assume it was a war of some sort. The few survivors were forced to go underground, since the surface was no longer inhabitable. The plan was that after 200 years, the people would return above ground, since by then it would be safe to start a new life on Earth. An electronically sealed box set to open at that time was entrusted to the people, which held detailed instructions on how to leave the underground city and return to Earth. But over time, that box became lost and forgotten, and the people are still living beneath the surface, where the city around them is rapidly starting to die and fall apart.

Did I mention this is a family film? Something about a family movie set in a post-apocalyptic dying world just fascinates me. So, the underground city of Ember is dying. Blackouts and power outages are becoming more frequent, and lasting longer than ever before. The city's power generator is on its last legs. Not only that, food is starting to become scarce for the people. Why don't the people leave? They're afraid of what lies beyond Ember's limits, least of which includes giant man-eating mutated rodents that look like moles crossed with a sea monster that are about the size of a semi truck. Not only that, the city's corrupt Mayor (Bill Murray) is keeping the people there, giving them false hope for survival, all the while hoarding most of the good food for himself in a secret room. The heroes of the story are two teens who think there is life beyond their dying city. There is a young man named Doon (Harry Treadaway), whose father (Tim Robbins) once tried to escape from Ember years ago, but failed. Doon still thinks there's a way, though. His best friend is a girl named Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan, who recently played the young girl in Atonement). Her ancestor was a previous Mayor of Ember, and so she holds onto that electronically sealed box that holds the plans to return to the surface, though she doesn't know what it does since the instructions within have long started to wither and fade to the point that they're almost unreadable.

The film is based on a series of young adult novels by Jeanne Duprau, and while it most likely matches the novels in terms of imagination and wonder (I haven't read them), there's something a little hollow about the narrative underneath. Director Gil Kenan (Monster House) and screenwriter Caroline Thompson (The Corpse Bride) constantly show us incredible sights, but we never truly get to learn about them or savor them as much as we should. I wanted to know more about the creatures of Ember, which besides the giant rodents I mentioned earlier, also include oversized friendly insects that we see precious little of, and play no actual part in the story itself. They're just there to grab our attention and spark our imagination, which they do. Then why doesn't the movie do anything with them? That's the question that I kept on asking. I was enjoying the movie in a sense, but I also found myself unfulfilled in a lot of other ways. I also wanted to know more about Ember itself. The production design and little details of the city are so fascinating, but it never goes into any details about how these people live, or the crude technology we see them using throughout the film. This movie is one giant tease. The script kind of rushes through the story, not even slowing down to ask the most obvious question, which is why is there so much child labor in Ember, since we see so many teens and preteens working dangerous jobs throughout the city?

The characters get the same treatment. We never get to know them as much as we should. The two young heroes are likable enough (mostly due to the fine young actors playing them), but they mainly exist to run around these expensive looking sets and move the story along. We never get a true sense of their relationship, even though they are familiar enough to trade jobs with each other in an early scene. (In this movie's world, as soon as a kid graduates from school, they draw a job from the Mayor's hat, which they do for the rest of their lives.) The supporting cast is also disappointing, despite the talent on display. Bill Murray never truly gets to stand out as the evil Mayor, because the movie never uses him enough. Tim Robbins gets a few good early scenes, then the movie kind of forgets about him. And poor Martin Landau literally sleeps through most of his role. Just because his character is a narcoleptic doesn't give you an excuse to just give him nothing to do. The characters in this movie are never given a chance to grow, and that's a shame, because I wanted to know more about everyone.

Although I cannot fully recommend City of Ember, I do think it is a movie that deserves to be seen. The stuff that is good may not be enough to take your mind off of what doesn't work, but there's just so much about this movie that fascinated me. Despite my reservations, I'd recommend this over its current family film competition, the brain dead Beverly Hills Chihuahua, any day of the week. At least this movie forces its audience to think and be engaged somewhat. If the plot and the characters were as fleshed out as the world surrounding it was, this movie would have been a real find.

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