![]() ![]() These people don't just live in a bubble they're not even aware there is a bubble. For a society on the brink of extinction, they're sure handling things relatively well. As a result, it's difficult to become engrossed in the story's central journey or to care much about the fate of the people of Ember when you don't understand why they're all so naive, complacent and incurious. What do they do with their dead? Or their sick? What about criminals? There's been no robbery, rape or murder after being cooped up together underground for two centuries? Hell, forget all that - what about toilet paper?! The script by Caroline Thompson never allows the viewer to get to know any of the characters particularly well. Indeed, many of its conceptual flaws and lapses in logic related to living in an underground city for 200 years might have been forgiven if it were "just a cartoon." It's simply tough to suspend one's disbelief - and the movie never tries hard enough to not make you question things - that people could survive on green house plants and canned food for so long or that they don't know a thing about the surface world. While the imaginative Kenan deserves kudos for making the leap to live-action after his acclaimed performance-capture family film Monster House, City of Ember may have been better suited as a CG-animated tale. Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Clary, and Mary Kay Place appears as Mrs. Tim Robbins co-stars as Doon's mechanically-inclined dad, while Martin Landau provides additional comic relief as Doon's elderly co-worker Sol. Incurring the wrath of the mayor and his cronies (Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook) adds a sense of urgency to Lina and Doon's need to escape the City of Ember. The kids also discover that the city's beloved, all-powerful Mayor (Bill Murray) is not as good-intentioned as the loyal and law-abiding denizens have been led to believe. They soon realize that the box holds a long lost secret left behind centuries before by the city's venerable Builders: a now badly tattered set of instructions on how to escape the crumbling city. Lina asks Doon for help in deciphering the clues in the box. Meanwhile, Lina finds a mysterious old box in her grandmother's closet, but her Granny (Liz Smith) has no recollection of why it is so vitally important. Doon hopes to find a way to save the generator and thus his beloved city. And Doon, the son of a tinkerer (Tim Robbins) ignores his aged, “it’s not my job” boss in the pipe works (Martin Landau) and tries to get to the generator to have a crack at fixing it.The citizens of Ember only work one job - assigned to them in a lottery on their Assignment Day - for their whole lives Lina is a messenger, while Doon works in the Pipeworks. She delves into the mystery of a missing box of instructions for the city. The religious just smile and sing their hymn, “This is all we know,” as the lights dim.īut Lina (Saoirse Ronan of “Atonement”) and Doon (Harry Treadaway of “Control”) aren’t giving up or accepting the official government line. Whom do you turn to? The Mayor (Bill Murray) is a corrupt empty suit, ruling by tacit fear of the unknown (“Ours is the only light in a dark world”) and promising to have a “task force” look into the generator problem. “Time,” as the ticking clock we hear tells us, “is running out.” The generator that runs the lights is flickering. The canned food supplies are running out. Knowledge has faded and the vast city is crumbling, degenerating as generations have grown up not really understanding how anything works, why they’re underground or what was supposed to happen after 200 years. “On the day the world ended,” a narrator tells us, learned men in blue lab coats sent the last vestiges of the human race below ground to hold out for 200 years in the City of Ember. It could be the first dystopia many a tween or early teen moviegoer experiences, a movie about teenagers trying to save the human race. “City of Ember” is a not-quite-classic addition to the genre, a dystopia that gets away with being derivative and somewhat prone to trite “thrill ride” action sequences. Today’s word is “dystopia,” as in the opposite of “utopia,” often used to describe works of science fiction that depict an Earth that has been polluted (“Blade Runner”), globally warmed (“Waterworld”), or Big Brother’d (“1984”) into slavery. Heads up, all you tweens out there in Let’s Go to the Movies-land. ![]()
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