City of Ember

I love to watch children movies. I love them more than porn. Wait scratch that, those two should never be associated together. So I went to the local AMC to catch this flick. I continue to absolutely loathe the way the cinema is set-up, but its just sooooo close to where I live and has a great concessions package for non-fatties.

City of Ember
Directed by Gil Kenan

What really drew me to City of Ember was the trailer for the film. It looked like a great adventure with a ramshackled world lost in a gaze of incandescent light. Too bad it fouckin sucked. Here's the short of the long. The outside world is no longer habitable for mankind and a group of scientist and architects build an underground city with the goal of preserving mankind for 200 years after which they believe the world will be habitable again. The city is entrusted to a mayor who is also guardian to the protocol of leaving the city when the time comes. Unfortunately through the succession of mayors the secret to leaving the underground city is lost. Thus after 200 years no one knows about the secrets to leaving the city and the city itself is falling apart. That is the first 15 or so minutes of the film. The rest is a mindless mess of kids whose earnest and spunk sends them on a series of errands to unlock the passage out, all the while trying to avoid well, nothing. There really wasn't any drama or tension to build up their escape, which pretty much left the climax like eating a rotten banana, soft, mushy, and void of nutrients.

So the plot and story pacing sucked, whatever, I'm a visualist and my main objective for watching this flick for me was to see some amazing sets and designs. I came in thinking of City of Lost Children or the very least Goonies. I wanted eye candy. Because the premise held so many possibilities but instead the sets looked void of any character. For a city running low on resources and its entire survival depending of rations and an enormous power generator things still looked pretty well kept. The overall colour tone was an unimaginative beige, two girls one cup was more colourful. There there were two giant cgi critters, this came completely out of nowhere. There really wasn't anyway to explain why giant moles or enormous moths exist in this world. You could assume with was due to the radioactive catastrophe but then these creatures would have a more mutated look. Radiation doesn't make things bigger, thats just bad science fiction.

I found none of the acting really appealing, I had such high hopes for Tim Robbins and Bill Murray, but it feels like they were there just to collect a check. There wasn't much of a personality to anyone in this picture. Well, maybe they did have personality, but it would be of the genre of EMO kids who listen to far too much My Chem Romance or Failout Boy. My god, our main male protagonist just a whiny sod who spent the majority of the film complaining that he should be in the generator crew cuz his being there would for sure the safety of the city. This some weird shit to let your kids belive. With no basis at all you kids out there can't simple think you can save the world. If mummy and duddy told you otherwise they are ass fat liars. Thank god for Tim Robbins shuting this kid up with a simple question, what can you foukin' DO. No answer, then the kids full of shit.

Okay there is one allegory in this movie i thought was pretty clever. Where ever humanity exists or lives, be it the earth's surface or beneath the crust, they will still find ways to fouck it up.