City of Ember

Books are always better than the movie on which they are based. The most annoying thin g a person can snidely say is "The book was better." Of course the book was better. The book typically has much more time, language and ideas it can get across. Also, the entire action takes place in our mind and no image on a movie screen can compare to the images that flicker in our own imaginations. It is just the way it is. Perhaps then, the best compliment a movie can receive is that the movie made me want to read the book. If a movie based on a book I have not read is a good movie, why wouldn't I want to read the book, if books are always better? I mention this for this movie because I now have a desire to read the book, and maybe even the others in the series.

Ember is an underground city that needs to exist for 200 years. It was built in hopes of maintaining the human race after some unexplained event that wipes out the above world. The city is supposed to last for 200 years and after 200 years a box will open with instructions on how to leave Ember. Each mayor holds onto the box, but something happens after one Mayor's death and the box disappears. I have never seen a movie that so quickly and effectively spanned 200 years. It is a manner of minutes before we are 200 years later in the story. Ember is starting to fall apart, the self sustaining artificial lights are starting to freak out because the generator was only meant to last 200 years, only no one seems to know. The Mayor, Cole(Bill Murray) is a clueless and mean Mayor, who has a giant pot belly, when the rest of Ember is barely scraping by. The story focuses on two young people, Lina Mayfleet(Saoirse Ronan) and Doon(Harry Treadway), who have just been assigned their jobs in Ember. Doon got messenger and Lina got pipeworker, but Doon trades her because he wants to be closer to the generator that he believes he can fix. Lina's younger sister finds the magical box and Lina begins to piece it together trying to figure out what it means. She and Doon quickly realize they are directions to leave Ember, which no one thought existed.

City of Ember is the kind of movie that everyone ignores, but shouldn't. Every year so many movies come out aimed at kids, based on books that have supernatural type flavor and some catch on and some get lost. City of Ember has gotten lost and it doesn't deserve to be lost. Ember moves quickly, features an amazing CGI city (Some of the other CGi miss the mark, admittedly), is thrilling, interesting and complex. Of course, it is also too dark and maybe a bit scary for kids. It is a PG movie in the vein of The Goonies or other adventure movies. I am not saying it is comparable to The Goonies, but it is similarly themed. The two young stars are both good here and Bill Murray and Tim Robbins add a nice adult presence. Murray doesn't deliver the laughs you might expect from him, but he facilitates the villain role well enough. Robbins has become a master at playing disaffected weirdos and here he adds another character to that genre of characters. Ember is a dark movie and doesn't offer the kind of escapism people are looking for as we watch Ember go through the hardships of an economic downturn and the citizens are in constant fear during the very scary blackout sequences. It seems that the soul or spirit of humanity has been lost as these underground citizens remain unsure of what is going on.

There are many unanswered questions that I think will annoy people, but I kind of enjoyed that aspect. We never find out what happened above ground that caused the demolition of the human race. Whatever it is, it may have been the cause of turning small animals into giant animals. We see a giant bee and a mole looking creature that is botrh impressive and very scary looking, with these weird tentacle looking things and a nasty appetite. The ending will also probably provoke questions, which I think is a good thing. Is the ending happy? One could make that argument, but there is still so much left about which to be curious. I know that a young person movie has to wrap up in time for kids not to get squirrelly, so I am sure some of the stuff got left on the cutting room floor. But I have so many questions. I want to know more. I need to know more. I was even hypnotized by the crisp sound in the movie. Throughout the whole movie you could hear the water dripping from the tiniest corner of the frame. It is mesmerizing for me.

It is not all that often that a movie aimed at young people gets me these days. Pixar being the exception of course. However, City of Ember has me interested. I want more time in that dark and dirty city. I want to know more about how the whole thing works. The movie leaves some to be desired, but it also has made me care enough to know more. I want to know why English hasn't seemed to change much in 200 years, but the names have gotten stranger. Maybe I am over-thinking it (Me, NO, NEVER!), but I am fully committed to this idea of an underground city that has a very cool and elaborate way out. And to me, that signals that the movie did its job of thrilling and entertaining me. I was never bored and when it was over, I felt relief, sort of. Oh and if you need more of a reason to see it, the woman who wrote Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare before Christmas wrote the script, so you know it is interesting.

Final Grade: B+