CITY OF EMBER - A REVIEW

CITY OF EMBER - A REVIEW

Just got back from a day at the movies with my son. Caught the newest 'family flick' -- which nowadays isn't as often as I wish. They're just not churning them out as much, not to mention that most of them totally miss the mark and wind up a convoluted mess.

City of Ember is one of those 'somewhere in the middle' kind of flims. The sets and production value are top-notch, but the story tends to sag here and there as it goes along. As with most mysteries or puzzles, you shouldn't find yourself ahead of the plot, but with this one you often do.

The basic storyline is that the world had decided to build an underground city called EMBER which would keep mankind alive for 200 years and then allow them to repopulate the Earth once the "disaster" is over with and everything is once again "safe". They never tell you what has actually happened to the planet, be it war, a bomb, whatever, and actually it doesn't really matter because the main thrust of this story is the attempt by two teenagers to solve the riddle of how to actually escape the city and find a way back to topsoil.

Granted, it's based on a young adult novel, but the writers shouldn't have played dumb and instead should have raised the material to match the visual imagery the movie displays. Because of interesting design of the underground city itself, and the cool look of the cavernous environment, I really WANTED to enjoy this flick, but wound up wondering every five minutes why the main characters were choosing to do one thing when most people would choose the other direction or choice to move the story along.

At one point there is a door they're trying to open which is secretly located within the bowels of all the city's pipelines and tunnels, but our heroes efforts are thwarted by the appearance of a gigantic and very hungry and angry mole (which looks great!). Once they've finally outsmarted the oversized rodent, they NEVER return to the locked door again until another 30 minutes into the movie. Huh? Logic like that will quickly turn off most viewers and this movie little by little does just exactly that.

And it is a shame, because they have a fine supporting cast including Tim Robbins, Martin Landau and Bill Murray, among several other great character actors. And given what they have to chew on scriptwise, they make do. But there is a real sense of humanity missing from the citizens of Ember and we never truly get a good idea of exactly HOW the city runs and maintains itself throughout hundreds of years. Everyone looks like extras dressed up in awkward combinations of costumes to signify they've lived under the ground for decades....except they still look like extras. We never see the details of who they are, what they do, how they survive, what their economy is like, etc.

It did make me want to read the book, though. Again, just to learn more details which weren't fleshed out in the film.

The effects in the movie are solid and beautifully created, and again the production value as a whole is splendid, but it's too much to ask of the visuals to hold up a plot that is riddled with holes of common sense.

6 out of 10.