Making any kind of a movie is hard work, and much of it is spontaneous and intuitive. If there were a blueprint for making a successful movie, filmmakers all over the world would be following it. Instead, we get hit-and-miss attempts all the time. Making a live-action fantasy movie that its filmmakers hope will appeal both to children and adults only doubles, maybe quadruples, the work they have cut out for them. New Line's 2007 live-action fantasy "The Last Mimzy" tries to do just that, appeal to children and adults, and it points up the difficulties of the job. If you look back on a few of the films that did succeed in this rather narrow category, films like "Mary Poppins," "E.T.," and "The Chronicles of Narnia," for example, you can see how difficult it is to produce a winner. "The Last Mimzy," I'm afraid, is not in the same league.
"The Last Mimzy" tries hard to be magical, charming, and endearing but remains mostly flat and lifeless, much like a typical Lifetime Channel movie on TV. Based on a short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett and directed by Robert Shaye, whom people might know better as a producer of such things as "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Lord of the Rings," "The Last Mimzy" tries to update Lewis Carroll with a modern tale of a little girl and her brother going through the looking glass, metaphorically speaking. Alas, as Agatha Christie would say, the mirror cracks.
The movie's main appeal for children is the fact that its two main characters are kids. The movie's appeal to adults is the technology it employs in its story line and the fact that its four supporting players are adults. Is it enough to capture the interest of children or adult viewers? I doubt it. It didn't capture my attention. I found most of the characters and the story line rather mundane.
The main character is Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil), a ten-year-old boy living with his parents and younger sister in Seattle, Washington. Noah, like most kids these days, is into video games, text messaging, cell phones, IPods, widescreen TVs, and the rest of the electronics world; and, naturally, he's bored. But he won't be bored for long (even if the audience is). You see, the movie begins by telling us that an advanced future civilization created a series of "Mimzy's" and sent them back through time. The "why" is better left unsaid. Noah and his sister find one of these devices in a box near their home, and it causes them no end of trouble.
Noah's sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), opens the box, and inside she and Noah discover what they think are toys--a magical crystal that can create enormous energy, strange rocks that can levitate themselves and other objects, a mysterious shell that can increase a person's hearing a hundredfold, and a cute, little, stuffed bunny rabbit that is a ringer for the one Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's inspiration) carried with her. The futuristic bunny also talks to Emma and tells her its name is Mimzy (as in Carroll's "Jabberwocky" but with a "z" instead of an "s"). Do the kids share any of this information with their parents, David and Jo (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson)? Not on your life. Remember the business of hiding E.T. in the closet? Same thing here. The filmmakers would not have had much of a conflict if the movie's adults started researching these objects.
Instead, the kids play with the things and explore their mysteries themselves. Noah wins a science-fair prize at school with his newfound genius for physics, and Emma creates an energy sphere that scares away her baby-sitter. Do the parents catch on? Of course not. Parents have to be more than a little dense in any kids' movie, or kids wouldn't like it.
The other two adults in the story are Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), and his fiancée, Naomi (Kathyrn Hahn). Larry keeps having dreams of a Mandela, a symbolic representation of the universe, that looks exactly like the drawings Noah makes at school, based on the design of the box he and his sister found. Larry doesn't think his dream and Noah's drawings are coincidental, and he becomes involved in the plot incidentally.
Despite the potential for movie magic in all of this, "The Last Mimzy" stays earthbound throughout most of its running time. Part of the problem is that the filmmakers never develop their characters or give them any kind of meaningful backgrounds. The film only tells us that the Wilders are an ideal family, owning a house in town and a house on the water, driving a new Mercedes, and so loving and together that when the father returns from work, the kids greet him with hugs and kisses. Then, when the Mimzy artifacts show up, everybody begins acting irrationally. I mean, how much sense does it make, for instance, that when the mother finds out about the technological marvels her children possess, she gets hysterical and throws them in the garbage? Hello? Is she an idiot?
"The Last Mimzy" tries hard to be magical, charming, and endearing but remains mostly flat and lifeless, much like a typical Lifetime Channel movie on TV. Based on a short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett and directed by Robert Shaye, whom people might know better as a producer of such things as "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Lord of the Rings," "The Last Mimzy" tries to update Lewis Carroll with a modern tale of a little girl and her brother going through the looking glass, metaphorically speaking. Alas, as Agatha Christie would say, the mirror cracks.
The movie's main appeal for children is the fact that its two main characters are kids. The movie's appeal to adults is the technology it employs in its story line and the fact that its four supporting players are adults. Is it enough to capture the interest of children or adult viewers? I doubt it. It didn't capture my attention. I found most of the characters and the story line rather mundane.
The main character is Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil), a ten-year-old boy living with his parents and younger sister in Seattle, Washington. Noah, like most kids these days, is into video games, text messaging, cell phones, IPods, widescreen TVs, and the rest of the electronics world; and, naturally, he's bored. But he won't be bored for long (even if the audience is). You see, the movie begins by telling us that an advanced future civilization created a series of "Mimzy's" and sent them back through time. The "why" is better left unsaid. Noah and his sister find one of these devices in a box near their home, and it causes them no end of trouble.
Noah's sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), opens the box, and inside she and Noah discover what they think are toys--a magical crystal that can create enormous energy, strange rocks that can levitate themselves and other objects, a mysterious shell that can increase a person's hearing a hundredfold, and a cute, little, stuffed bunny rabbit that is a ringer for the one Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's inspiration) carried with her. The futuristic bunny also talks to Emma and tells her its name is Mimzy (as in Carroll's "Jabberwocky" but with a "z" instead of an "s"). Do the kids share any of this information with their parents, David and Jo (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson)? Not on your life. Remember the business of hiding E.T. in the closet? Same thing here. The filmmakers would not have had much of a conflict if the movie's adults started researching these objects.
Instead, the kids play with the things and explore their mysteries themselves. Noah wins a science-fair prize at school with his newfound genius for physics, and Emma creates an energy sphere that scares away her baby-sitter. Do the parents catch on? Of course not. Parents have to be more than a little dense in any kids' movie, or kids wouldn't like it.
The other two adults in the story are Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), and his fiancée, Naomi (Kathyrn Hahn). Larry keeps having dreams of a Mandela, a symbolic representation of the universe, that looks exactly like the drawings Noah makes at school, based on the design of the box he and his sister found. Larry doesn't think his dream and Noah's drawings are coincidental, and he becomes involved in the plot incidentally.
Despite the potential for movie magic in all of this, "The Last Mimzy" stays earthbound throughout most of its running time. Part of the problem is that the filmmakers never develop their characters or give them any kind of meaningful backgrounds. The film only tells us that the Wilders are an ideal family, owning a house in town and a house on the water, driving a new Mercedes, and so loving and together that when the father returns from work, the kids greet him with hugs and kisses. Then, when the Mimzy artifacts show up, everybody begins acting irrationally. I mean, how much sense does it make, for instance, that when the mother finds out about the technological marvels her children possess, she gets hysterical and throws them in the garbage? Hello? Is she an idiot?
Making any kind of a movie is hard work, and much of it is spontaneous and intuitive. If there were a blueprint for making a successful movie, filmmakers all over the world would be following it. Instead, we get hit-and-miss attempts all the time. Making a live-action fantasy movie that its filmmakers hope will appeal both to children and adults only doubles, maybe quadruples, the work they have cut out for them. New Line's 2007 live-action fantasy "The Last Mimzy" tries to do just that, appeal to children and adults, and it points up the difficulties of the job. If you look back on a few of the films that did succeed in this rather narrow category, films like "Mary Poppins," "E.T.," and "The Chronicles of Narnia," for example, you can see how difficult it is to produce a winner. "The Last Mimzy," I'm afraid, is not in the same league.
"The Last Mimzy" tries hard to be magical, charming, and endearing but remains mostly flat and lifeless, much like a typical Lifetime Channel movie on TV. Based on a short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett and directed by Robert Shaye, whom people might know better as a producer of such things as "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Lord of the Rings," "The Last Mimzy" tries to update Lewis Carroll with a modern tale of a little girl and her brother going through the looking glass, metaphorically speaking. Alas, as Agatha Christie would say, the mirror cracks.
The movie's main appeal for children is the fact that its two main characters are kids. The movie's appeal to adults is the technology it employs in its story line and the fact that its four supporting players are adults. Is it enough to capture the interest of children or adult viewers? I doubt it. It didn't capture my attention. I found most of the characters and the story line rather mundane.
The main character is Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil), a ten-year-old boy living with his parents and younger sister in Seattle, Washington. Noah, like most kids these days, is into video games, text messaging, cell phones, IPods, widescreen TVs, and the rest of the electronics world; and, naturally, he's bored. But he won't be bored for long (even if the audience is). You see, the movie begins by telling us that an advanced future civilization created a series of "Mimzy's" and sent them back through time. The "why" is better left unsaid. Noah and his sister find one of these devices in a box near their home, and it causes them no end of trouble.
Noah's sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), opens the box, and inside she and Noah discover what they think are toys--a magical crystal that can create enormous energy, strange rocks that can levitate themselves and other objects, a mysterious shell that can increase a person's hearing a hundredfold, and a cute, little, stuffed bunny rabbit that is a ringer for the one Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's inspiration) carried with her. The futuristic bunny also talks to Emma and tells her its name is Mimzy (as in Carroll's "Jabberwocky" but with a "z" instead of an "s"). Do the kids share any of this information with their parents, David and Jo (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson)? Not on your life. Remember the business of hiding E.T. in the closet? Same thing here. The filmmakers would not have had much of a conflict if the movie's adults started researching these objects.
Instead, the kids play with the things and explore their mysteries themselves. Noah wins a science-fair prize at school with his newfound genius for physics, and Emma creates an energy sphere that scares away her baby-sitter. Do the parents catch on? Of course not. Parents have to be more than a little dense in any kids' movie, or kids wouldn't like it.
The other two adults in the story are Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), and his fiancée, Naomi (Kathyrn Hahn). Larry keeps having dreams of a Mandela, a symbolic representation of the universe, that looks exactly like the drawings Noah makes at school, based on the design of the box he and his sister found. Larry doesn't think his dream and Noah's drawings are coincidental, and he becomes involved in the plot incidentally.
Despite the potential for movie magic in all of this, "The Last Mimzy" stays earthbound throughout most of its running time. Part of the problem is that the filmmakers never develop their characters or give them any kind of meaningful backgrounds. The film only tells us that the Wilders are an ideal family, owning a house in town and a house on the water, driving a new Mercedes, and so loving and together that when the father returns from work, the kids greet him with hugs and kisses. Then, when the Mimzy artifacts show up, everybody begins acting irrationally. I mean, how much sense does it make, for instance, that when the mother finds out about the technological marvels her children possess, she gets hysterical and throws them in the garbage? Hello? Is she an idiot?
"The Last Mimzy" tries hard to be magical, charming, and endearing but remains mostly flat and lifeless, much like a typical Lifetime Channel movie on TV. Based on a short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett and directed by Robert Shaye, whom people might know better as a producer of such things as "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Lord of the Rings," "The Last Mimzy" tries to update Lewis Carroll with a modern tale of a little girl and her brother going through the looking glass, metaphorically speaking. Alas, as Agatha Christie would say, the mirror cracks.
The movie's main appeal for children is the fact that its two main characters are kids. The movie's appeal to adults is the technology it employs in its story line and the fact that its four supporting players are adults. Is it enough to capture the interest of children or adult viewers? I doubt it. It didn't capture my attention. I found most of the characters and the story line rather mundane.
The main character is Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil), a ten-year-old boy living with his parents and younger sister in Seattle, Washington. Noah, like most kids these days, is into video games, text messaging, cell phones, IPods, widescreen TVs, and the rest of the electronics world; and, naturally, he's bored. But he won't be bored for long (even if the audience is). You see, the movie begins by telling us that an advanced future civilization created a series of "Mimzy's" and sent them back through time. The "why" is better left unsaid. Noah and his sister find one of these devices in a box near their home, and it causes them no end of trouble.
Noah's sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), opens the box, and inside she and Noah discover what they think are toys--a magical crystal that can create enormous energy, strange rocks that can levitate themselves and other objects, a mysterious shell that can increase a person's hearing a hundredfold, and a cute, little, stuffed bunny rabbit that is a ringer for the one Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's inspiration) carried with her. The futuristic bunny also talks to Emma and tells her its name is Mimzy (as in Carroll's "Jabberwocky" but with a "z" instead of an "s"). Do the kids share any of this information with their parents, David and Jo (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson)? Not on your life. Remember the business of hiding E.T. in the closet? Same thing here. The filmmakers would not have had much of a conflict if the movie's adults started researching these objects.
Instead, the kids play with the things and explore their mysteries themselves. Noah wins a science-fair prize at school with his newfound genius for physics, and Emma creates an energy sphere that scares away her baby-sitter. Do the parents catch on? Of course not. Parents have to be more than a little dense in any kids' movie, or kids wouldn't like it.
The other two adults in the story are Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), and his fiancée, Naomi (Kathyrn Hahn). Larry keeps having dreams of a Mandela, a symbolic representation of the universe, that looks exactly like the drawings Noah makes at school, based on the design of the box he and his sister found. Larry doesn't think his dream and Noah's drawings are coincidental, and he becomes involved in the plot incidentally.
Despite the potential for movie magic in all of this, "The Last Mimzy" stays earthbound throughout most of its running time. Part of the problem is that the filmmakers never develop their characters or give them any kind of meaningful backgrounds. The film only tells us that the Wilders are an ideal family, owning a house in town and a house on the water, driving a new Mercedes, and so loving and together that when the father returns from work, the kids greet him with hugs and kisses. Then, when the Mimzy artifacts show up, everybody begins acting irrationally. I mean, how much sense does it make, for instance, that when the mother finds out about the technological marvels her children possess, she gets hysterical and throws them in the garbage? Hello? Is she an idiot?
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