Imaginative 'Ember' rushes fast-paced plot
The real star of "City of Ember," which could be the first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film for the whole family, is the city itself: an underground metropolis teeming with people and endless miles of pipes and wires and lights.
As brought to life by director Gil Kenan ("Monster House") and his collaborators, the city is a triumph of imagination and design. If only they'd paid as much attention to the characters who live inside it.
Based on a popular young-adult novel, "City of Ember" recounts the last days of the subterranean home for the human race built in the wake of a world-ending environmental catastrophe. For 200 years, Ember thrived on the electric power provided by its mighty generator. But lately, the generator has sputtered, and Ember's lights have started to die.
No one seems concerned about the generator's increasingly frequent failures, though, except for two teenagers. Doon (Harry Treadaway), the son of an eccentric inventor, knows that something is seriously wrong and vows to fix the generator himself. Lina (Saoirse Ronan), a plucky orphan living with her grandmother, discovers a mysterious metal box, the contents of which suggest that if residents don't leave Ember soon, they all will perish.
With another doomsday approaching and only this strange box to guide them, the two work together to figure out how to escape Ember. Along the way, they have to fight the city's corrupt mayor (a hilariously smarmy Bill Murray) as well as its complacent, shortsighted citizens, who don't believe a world even exists beyond the city's borders.
Kenan, working from a script by Caroline Thompson, keeps the pace of "City of Ember" brisk. It's hard not to feel a rush of exhilaration during the opening scenes, when the film plunges you into this strange underground world and then involves you in Doon and Lina's race against time.
Eventually, though, the film starts to feel rushed, as if Thompson's strategy were simply to pack as much of the book's plot into the script as she could. Characters and plot points whiz in and out of the film with virtually no explanation. Consider Doon and Lina's battle with a giant, man-eating mole deep inside the pipes of Ember. Wait a minute: Ember is home to giant man-eating moles??? Apparently, yes. But the film has no time to explain why or explore how Ember's residents might feel about that.
The relentless plot overwhelms even the main characters. Doon and Lina are likable enough, but we're never given the time to really care about them, or even know much about them. As a result, the action scenes feel increasingly mechanical as the film unfolds. And the ending, which should have us staring at the screen in wonder, barely elicits a shrug.
"City of Ember" contains enough imagination and thrills to amuse the tweens and teens it's geared toward. (The film is probably too scary for very young children.) But after the final credits roll and the theater lights come on, the film will flicker out of their minds like one of Ember's lights.
"City of Ember"
2½ stars
Starring: Bill Murray, Saorise Ronan, Harry Treadaway
Directed by: Gil Kenan
Other: A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG. 95 minutes.