Film Review

With the whole world seemingly falling into economic distress, global meltdown, (and I’m talking about the real world now) films like City of Ember (click title to view trailer) seem to have a somewhat different tone to them. And even though this film is very much so a kid’s film, the topic somehow feels more relevant than ever.
The film tells the story of the city of ember, originally created as sort of a rescuing hub for the dying human race. The films starts by showing us that the whole world’s going to hell so the people go underground and get a box with the way out that only opens two hundred years later. Of course the box gets lost, the people forget and strangely the whole underground society turns into a pseudo-communist community with Bill Murray as the big bad mayor. Even though the plot feels somewhat engaging, anybody who’s ever read any pulp-fantasy fiction will realize that the plot mechanisms of the film are super standard and not really that exciting. Plus, there are fantasy books out there that tell the story way better. (Death Gate series). But hey it’s a kiddy film, so it doesn’t matter how many plot-holes there are right, that’s probably what they thought when they were making this film. Because for a detective kind of story, everything seems uncomfortably illogical and even the final method of escaping the city is probably the most unlikely way of leaving an underground city. I won’t give it away yet, but is has something to do with falling down and appearing above. Confused yet? Well, I certainly was.
But even though there’s a lot of bad, there’s also a lot of good stuff there as well. The sets are brilliant, everything you see is really physically there, at least almost everything. City of Ember really proves that good set pieces and design win over green screen laziness every day. (Take that Lucas!) Plus, there are some really good actors here and there, especially Tim Robbins as the disillusioned rebel is really powerful in all his scenes. The child actors are more than decent as well, even though the main actor looked a bit like a girl, but that’s probably what they consider sexy nowadays huh?
All in all it’s a visually impressive, well-acted film that lacks plot-wise and really doesn’t satisfy the viewers curiosity concerning this underground world. To me it just really needed more monsters; more puzzles and then it would have been perfect. However, the lack of monsters and excitement means that younger viewers should be able to watch and enjoy the film without a problem, so if you’re under 16 you’ll probably like it more then I did. But for me, it was just a little bit too boring.

Rating: Rental

Conclusion: Visually impressive and boasts a strong cast, but lacks in excitement and action.