City of Ember Never Flickers to Life – a Movie Review
The City of Ember DVD was released on January 20, 2009. It should have been an exciting movie with the stellar cast it features: Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landeau, and others, but City of Ember never flickers to life.
The idea behind City of Ember is fairly novel and intriguing: when an unspecified disaster dooms the surface of Planet Earth, an entire city is built. There the last remnant of humanity has lived for two centuries. The Builders left the residents of Ember a generator designed to last 200 years, a vast cache of supplies, greenhouses, buildings, and a civilization run by a succession of mayors.
Instructions were also left to help the residents return to the surface after 200 years when it is assumed the planet will be habitable again. But something happens as the city’s leaders pass the instructions from one mayor to the next, and the instructions as well as any knowledge of them pass out of memory.
Two hundred years pass, and not only are the food supplies running low, but also the generator starts to fail, plunging the decrepit city into longer spells of total darkness… well, not total darkness. One of the annoying flaws in City of Ember is the fact that it is never completely dark way below the surface of the planet, so the viewer is never 100% plunged into a realistically darkened world.
Bill Murray plays the city of Ember’s gluttonous, self-centered mayor, who is stockpiling goods for himself, and he and his goons are the closest we get to villains. Frankly, they aren’t very frightening.
Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) and Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) play the two teen heroes who must unravel the mystery of the City of Ember before their world is lost. There are a lot of scenes of the heroine, Lena, trying to piece together some instructions she finds and dealing with her crazy, yarn-stringing, couch destroying grandmother in City of Ember. In fact, City of Ember gets bogged down in scenes that don’t really help advance the plot much. Some scenes appear to be more interested in creating the next big ride at Disney World than in moving the story along.
There are huge, mutated creatures roaming in the dark outside the city of Ember. A gigantic, weird-looking mole is seen a couple of times in the pipes threatening a few of the citizens of Ember. Scary? Not so much, but it might be a little scary for young children. A large piece of a beetle is found, but except for the mole monster and a large moth, no other creatures are seen. Mutant subterranean creatures could have added a real element of suspense, even terror, both in the city and as the two teens search for a way out, but this avenue is never developed.
City of Ember is definitely aimed at a young audience, and in a sense, the lack of excitement and fear is a good thing for young children. However, City of Ember seems to have been aimed more at teens, and I don’t think teens would find it much more exciting than I did.
And what Hollywood fare would be complete without a religion-bashing scene or two? Some of the sheep-like residents of Ember mouth such drivel as, “Who built this city? That’s right, the Builders, and they will return one day…” Obviously, Christians and other religious folk would prefer to spend their time singing, mouthing platitudes, and waiting for the Builders to return than in taking any action when the city is falling own around them. Darn those religious nuts!
City of Ember is not a bad movie, but it simply never gets very exciting and doesn’t live up to the possibilities that such an interesting plot and good cast should have brought to the screen. It seems like a very low-budget production, but I am just not interested enough in City of Ember to look up the numbers.
The set for City of Ember is kind of cool, and the movie is mildly entertaining. City of Ember is relatively harmless fare for kids and would be somewhat exciting to young ones. I do wonder what kind of subliminal message young ones pick up, however, when shown the stupidity of people who believe in and wait upon a Master Builder to return.
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Written by KathrynDarden
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