City of Ember

Rating

Director

Gil Kenan

Screenplay

Caroline Thompson (Book by Jeanne Duprau)

Length

95 min.

Starring

Harry Treadaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Murray, Toby Jones, Saoirse Ronan, Mary Kay Place, Liz Smith, Amy Quinn, Catherine Quinn, Martin Landau, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Mackenzie Crook

MPAA Rating

PG for mild peril and some thematic elements

Review

There are many films made for children each year and some of them transcend the genre and provide a wonderful evening at the movies for adults. City of Ember is not one of those films.

A group of scientists seeing their world coming to an end, though what the reason for it is never explained, decides to seal away a small city far below the earth’s surface. There several people can be protected from the chaos on land for 200 years allowing the turbulence to die down and the people to emerge to a new life.

Somewhere a few decades into the city’s history, the secure box counting down the days until the people in the City of Ember can leave, was lost after the unexpected death of one of the mayors. It would later be found by Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan), the young descendent of the seventh mayor who embarks on a journey with her schoolyard friend, Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway), to uncover the meaning of the mysterious map and instructions in the box and escape the city before the generator collapses and plunges the city forever into darkness.

After his critically acclaimed debut with Monster House, it’s hard to see how this kind of film came about. The problems could largely be based on Production Company Walden Media’s general inability to tell strong stories with moral implications (Bridge to Terabithia the lone exception to this rule). Its failures could also be foisted on screenwriter Caroline Thompson whose years writing screenplays for Tim Burton may have allowed her to think she could do no wrong. Her screenplay, based on a kid’s book by Jeanne Duprau lacks any consistent narrative elements that make the film anything more than a long, dried up amusement park ride. There are obvious points in the story where it seems like Thompson is trying to draw Dickensian elements into a non-bizarre Burton-esque tale, but every attempt at finding something unusual is thwarted by leaps in logic and general malfeasance.

The actors seem to be determined to avoid looking like fools for having chosen such a problematic screenplay to enact, but they don’t always succeed. Oscar winner Tim Robbins has followed in the path of his longtime companion Susan Sarandon taking on roles in fantasy films presumably as a way to pay the bills but betraying his quality of craft in the process. Treadaway and Oscar nominee Ronan seem to be trying too hard to make themselves seem like credible actors that they come off pushy and insincere and oftentimes unrelateable. Ronan does the better job reaching out to the audience, but only on rare occasions.

Corruption seems to be extremely isolated, falling into the lap of the current mayor (Bill Murray) and his flunkies alone. There are no shades of gray here. There are the villains, the heroes and the oblivious. Murray delivers one of his worst performances ever, dancing between chewing and under-chewing the scenery, creating an uneven portrayal. Toby Jones is utterly wasted as his number one assistant and Mackenzie Crook is a dud as the club-footed warehouse worker who tries to assist them.

The sets and costumes, capturing the only true Dickensian element of the story, are absolutely fantastic. They blend gritty realism with subterranean fantasy and create a truly intriguing setting. Unfortunately, they’re the only aspects of the film that really deserves praise. The rest of the technical contributions are far from exceptional, the visual effects being elementary at best and painfully obvious at their worst.

City of Ember is more of an adventure yarn for children who don’t really care about plot consistencies. For instance, would they care that there is no explanation for why the city is created no of why the mayor would be so greedy? Is it that important to wonder how Lina knows to color the sky in her dream world blue or how the engorged mole managed to get so large in the absence of a consistent food source?

There are so many questions needing answered that it’s not hard to spend much of the film wondering what the purpose is and being disappointed when there is no rational response.

Review Written

October 13, 2008