Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
3/29/07
I'm
a big believer that every movie should be seen in a theater. You're
locked in there with the story, without your attention drifting to that
TV Guide sitting next to your chair or you wandering off to the kitchen
during the dull parts (OK, you CAN wander off to the bathroom or the concession
stand, but that's on you!). As such, I never really understand why
people are so quick to say “I'll wait for DVD for that one” while the trailers
run (I do understand why they're quick to say “Why are there so many friggin'
trailers?!?”). However, in this case, I might make an exception.
The
Last Mimzy is a nice, pleasant little kiddie sci-fi thriller that starts
slow, picks up steam around the middle and then loses it again toward the
end. Lacking much in the way of spectacle and with a plot that's
best thought through only once, it's good enough to merit 90 minutes of
your life, but I will understand if you choose to spend those 90 minutes
on your couch shooting occasional glances toward the refrigerator.
The
Wilder family is happy but kinda stale. Dad David (Timothy Hutton)
spends way too much time at work and sends Mom Jo (Joely Richardson) and
kids Noah (Chris O'Neil) and Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) ahead on vacation
without him. On the beach, the kids discover an ornate box which,
when opened, produces a set of weird “toys”. The most toylike is
a stuffed bunny that makes gurgling sounds only Emma can hear. She
says it calls itself “Mimzy”. Noah is more interested in a flat,
rectangular object that's filled with triangular shapes only the kids can
see. The longer they play with their new toys, the smarter they seem
to get: Noah starts talking to spiders, who seem to follow his orders,
and drawing strange patterns identical to ones his teacher Larry White
(Rainn Wilson) sees in a recurring dream. And don't even get me started
on the telekinesis. Trouble starts when two of the “toys” combine
into a generator that blacks out half of the Northwestern US, calling in
Homeland Security's Nathanial Broadman (Michael Clarke Duncan). Even
more troubling is a conversation we see Emma have with Mimzy. We
can't hear the doll, but we can hear the frightened child whisper “But
I don't want the world to end. Not ever.”
At
this point, The Last Mimzy has shaken off a lethargic start to kick into
gear: the toys and the mysterious powers they grant the kids are
not only intriguing but also nicely creepy. After David finally starts
paying attention to all the weirdness around him, the parents' struggle
to understand what's happening is well acted and Larry and his fiancée
Naomi (a spirited Kathryn Hahn) do a great job delivering reams of New
Agey exposition. While O'Neil's acting debut is a pretty standard
kid's movie performance, Wryn delivers the goods: I was often frightened
both by and for Emma at the same time. Alas, then Homeland Security
has to come knocking down their door to drag everyone into a road show
production of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial from which things never
entirely recover.
The
biggest problem with the government angle is that the movie isn't really
invested in it. While it's interesting to watch Duncan in a role
that has nothing to do with him being huge, he and his co-workers are just
too darn nice to be that threatening and run such a lax facility that the
kids can slip out at will and even steal a truck with no sign of anyone
guarding anything. Plus, when all forces finally converge... well,
no kid's movie heavy should ever say “I don't know what just happened here,
but I do know that I'm really sorry.”
Where
the movie succeeds is by establishing a likable, even halfway realistic
family and dropping a nifty mystery into their laps. I'm a sucker
for alien (or, in this case, future) technology that seems genuinely alien,
and Mimzy and its' weird fellow toys (I liked the swishy thing that looks
like a slug, that's the one I'd have played with when I was 10) seem built
to do things we can't understand in ways we can't imagine. Granted,
when an unnecessary wrap-around “teacher in the future telling her class
what happened” structure is done beating everything to death, the toys'
mission proves to be awfully touchy-feely, but I was happy that the present-day
characters never really knew what had happened. I think the movie
would have done better to leave us in that position as well.
The
Last Mimzy is perfectly fine, pretty good, not half bad, the kind of
movie people will flip by on TV on future Sunday afternoons and find just
interesting enough to keep them from changing the channel. Family
audiences should be entertained, and I should mention that the audience
I saw it with seemed to have a great time. But, you know, you might
want to wait for the DVD. |
