"City of Ember" (2008) - Movie Review

“City of Ember” has a city which does not look to care for invention of stored energy or for that matter fire and many innumerable things. Still they enjoy the benefits of a big power station addressed as generator to light the entire underground region. There are no fables of things outside the realm of their city and no one really wants to know. The film pretty much diminishes humans into a chore seeking personalities unlike their curiosity to know things, learn those and always many pushing the envelope into the space of unknown. The story of course has rebels of its own learning later with banal information strange to be kept such a secret. It is about a city buried underground by “builders” with an information box passed onto Mayors containing detailed to safely (which would be funny when you watch) return to earth.

And there will be kids who will be only curious ones in searching for the answers as opposed to solutions as the city mayor Cole (Bill Murray in an abysmal display for a role where unnecessary gets redefined) would later ridicule the crowd. These two high school grade kids (do not know what kind of school system the city has) Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) and Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) go for their graduation of some kind called “Assignment Day” where they get their jobs to do. Out of a chit bag their destiny is selected. So does it mean a path of finding and choosing your own destiny? No. Lina gets to be “Pipeworker” while Doon gets to be a “Messenger”. They exchange their jobs. Is that going to unravel their act into a discovery of higher purpose? No. I do not see any change in the script with Lina the Pipeworker and Doon being the Messenger. Still the story does it for no reason.

The generator is dying and the black outs are increasing. And people are merrily doing their work and shakes a bit for a 10 second shutdown. Then continue the routine. The film directed by Gil Kenan adapted from the book of the same name by Jeanne Duprau assumes that we know the people well before we meet them. The film begins with a box telling what to do for the people of the Ember after 200 years to see the earth. The city is basically an underground project set up by weird people in the fear of losing all the people on earth to lock them up from the dreary of higher ground. They appear to believe things will be fine 200 years later to pass on the directions to come up. Anyways, the box is not a big deal and anything is not a big deal in the film which is symphony (a boring one) on the key of nothingness.

If there needs to be a list of unnecessary characters, it goes beyond than this review would go. It has Bill Murray a lazy Mayor eating food at his locker room when the city is going down, it has Tim Robbins as Doon’s dad who spells out the life concepts to his son which seem more like a parody of Andy Dufresne in his classic “The Shawshank Redemption” and what is the deal with the little sister of Lina, Poppy (Amy Quinn)? The girl looks clue less in every sequence she is in which is nothing to blame her than to the people who put her there. She chews the paper and her sweet and cute look does not aid this fantasy film to survive upon.

I have given up on seeing extraordinary in the graphics department coming up in the films now a day. Not because they do not provide their excellence but it is now a criteria to be a standard and there is no element of surprise. I remember seeing “Jurassic Park” and the dinosaurs come which marked a moment for me in the heights of CGI. It brought jitters of awe engulfing me entirely into that spectacle. That kind of graphics was made nothing in the coming days. Creating fantasy land and creatures of detailed weirdness, creepiness and disgust is now put in screen easily and perfectly. Hence unless there is an appropriate use of it in films like “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “The Matrix” or any film which beckoned the excellence of that department got the attention and rest went on as ordinary despite the effort and ordeal the department put in. “City of Ember” has ordinary graphics and that will be the only refuge for some goodness in it.

It looks like all the genres are getting exhausted. Enough cities have been destructed and went through catastrophe in the Hollywood and still it flourishes with new ones. But never does it carries the same awe it had a decade back. Things made in abundant makes it mediocre. “City of Ember” goes below that. It does not have characters we could relate or create attachment, does not have a proper nemesis, and does not have a reason for the existence of the characters and the city itself. Never do we know the regular routine, system and functioning of the city at all. We often wonder how the heck these people survived 200 years when electricity is flowing through them and they did not get to invent fire. Bites me.