: Jupiter Ascending
I couldn’t make head or tails of this from the promos, but it looked like it might be cool. It is fun, but sadly the plot is bare. It’s simultaneously too convoluted, however they managed that!
Basically the story’s about an anonymous girl who cleans houses who suddenly finds out she’s alien royalty and “owns” Earth. Other aliens want the Earth, so they’re all trying to kill her or manipulate her.
The problem is that in the first half of the movie we don’t undersand what’s going on so nothing makes sense (and the girl seems far too relaxed about seeing aliens and everything wild that’s happening around her). Once we figure things out, the second half of the movie has no surprises and is too simple.
To cover all those flaws in story, we have a lot of ridiculous action. Some aspects of it are cool — there’s some nice tech and special effects — but most of the action is so high-speed it’s a meaningless blur and there’s zero tension. We can’t even tell if the heros do anything heroic because everything happens too fast!
Despite all that, though, the film’s not terrible. It has no depth, but it’s just a popcorn flick, with fun visuals and action and pretty people. There are some funny moments (watch for a Terry Gilliam cameo), some tender moments, and decent performances. My favorite aspect of the film was the psychological manipulation of the girl by creepy villains. I wish there’d been more focus on that.
By and large this isn’t a classic, but it’s better than most scifi films and it doesn’t take itself too seriously (its universe reminds me a lot of the silly one in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Topic: [/movie] |
