The Last Mimzy

  • mimzy-still.jpgI know it’s hardly the thing to con­sider tak­ing in a movie dur­ing Holy Week, but if by any chance you can find the time, you might want to find out if “The Last Mimzy” is play­ing near you, because I sus­pect it won’t be in the­aters long. I mean, here’s a movie about chil­dren who come across some­thing unex­pected and almost mag­i­cal, and it man­ages to be nei­ther cutesy-preachy (see also “E.T.”) nor edgy-depressing (see also “The Shin­ing”). It has some­thing to say, but also leaves things unsaid. It posits some bad times ahead for human­ity, but ends with a bliss­ful ray of hope.

    Can’t imag­ine what they were think­ing — hardly the stuff of box office bonan­zas. And review­ers like this one thought it was insipid, so maybe I’m just a doof for lik­ing it. But any­way, it’s my blog, so I’m say­ing I wish there were more movies like this being made now.

    Some quick words on what it’s about: Two chil­dren find an odd box on the seashore by their family’s vaca­tion home. Noah, an under­achiev­ing 10-year-old (is there any other kind?) and Emma, his gifted younger sis­ter, find that the box con­tains an odd assort­ment of objects — black rocks, a blue blob, a seashell full of gunk, a thing like a glow­ing cir­cuit board … and a cud­dly lit­tle stuffed rab­bit whose name — as it tells Emma — is Mimzy.

    Mimzy can talk? Well, only in a sort of whirring purr that Emma can under­stand but no one else can. And it begins to be appar­ent that all the objects have unique prop­er­ties and can impart spe­cial tal­ents to the chil­dren. Emma and Noah have the child­like sense to real­ize right away that this is some­thing to keep secret, but the “toys” and the abil­i­ties they give are a lit­tle hard to keep under wraps. And the plot thick­ens when Mimzy tells Emma that the box and all its con­tents were sent back from the future and that there’s a vitally impor­tant mis­sion con­nected with them. The exact nature of the mis­sion only unfolds over time (as you’d expect) but involve an attempt by sci­en­tists to recap­ture lost humanity.

    The film might have gone wrong in many dif­fer­ent ways, but I felt like it dodged a lot of bul­lets. The sub­ur­ban fam­ily wasn’t dys­func­tional (thank heaven for small mer­cies — I didn’t think there was any­one mak­ing movies that could resist depict­ing sub­ur­ban­ites as mon­sters and mani­acs), the chil­dren weren’t smarmy or smart-alecky and oth­ers who get drawn in — from an ex-hippie sci­ence teacher to a Home­land Secu­rity big­wig — are lightly drawn char­ac­ters that don’t cross over into car­i­ca­tures. It has good spe­cial effects, but it doesn’t rely on them to sell its story. It has chil­dren in it, but it’s not the mealy insub­stan­tial fare of a fam­ily movie. Writ­ers man­aged a light touch, wisely stay­ing away from the kind of dark humor that under­mines so many movies these days.

    As for the mes­sage … well, there’s an aspect of it that’s worth a blog post all its own, but in the places where I dis­agreed with their out­look I could at least give them the respect that they gave their audi­ence. That, too, is in all-too-short sup­ply these days.

    dwight-shrute.jpgP.S. — Rainn Wil­son plays the sci­ence teacher, and it’s good to see him look­ing some­what nor­mal for a change. He did such a very good job play­ing repressed odd­ball Arthur Mar­tin on “Six Feet Under” and quin­tes­sen­tial brown-noser Dwight Schrute on “The Office” that you wouldn’t have believed he could have appeared even halfway normal.


    Related posts:

    1. Twenty good min­utes out of “King Kong”
    2. Too soon?
    3. Kong not king
    4. Decem­ber 20
    5. Beast and the Beauty

    March 31st, 2007 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Jan Bear 03.31.2007

    Thanks for your review. I thought it looked like some­thing I’d like to see. Maybe I’ll get a chance to take it in.

  • matt

    THanks fopr the review. My wife and I have our first date night in 5 years on Holy Tues­day and have been try­ing to fig­ure out what to do. I’ll have her read your review. Maybe we’ll see it. I;ll letyou know if we do.

  • Grace

    Good for you guys! It was Greg’s idea to see this, and it ended up being a fine idea. Some inter­est­ing things to mull over and a pos­i­tive over­all message.

    That being said, I’ve got­ten in the habit of includ­ing a “your mileage may vary” type dis­claimer with all movie reviews. Even with the peo­ple I know best, there can be dif­fer­ences of opinion.

    If you do go, let me know what you thought.

  • Fake Flow­ers

    Thanks for the review — looks like it might be worth tak­ing the kids to.

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