Movie Review - 'City of Ember'

City of Ember Starring Harry Treadaway, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, and Tim Robbins Directed by Gil Kenan Rated PG

It's a tremendous concept, but I have a gut feeling they've started telling us the story in the wrong place. City of Ember is based on a children's book by Jeanne DuPrau about an underground civilization that is running out of time and options.Ember was created by "The Builders," and though the characters in the story don't know how they got there exactly, we do; Earth was facing an apocalypse, so scientists created a city miles below the surface that was to survive for 200 years, after which time, its citizens could resurface and repopulate the planet.To me, the front end of this story is the most fascinating part:  What was the apocalypse, how was Ember built, how did the people eke out existences in their first years underground? We only get it as prologue, which is a crying shame. There are two books DuPrau wrote about this period, The Prophet of Yonwood and The Diamond of Darkhold, so perhaps we'll get to see it someday.On its own merits, City of Ember does give us something new. Its visuals are clearly inspired by the steampunk movement of the late 1980s and 90s, typified by contraptions and gadgets that are far too advanced for a Victorian era, but are nonetheless steam-powered. Think Victor Hugo or H.G. Wells with a laptop. The city works because it has to. Every year, its teenagers await Assignment Day, where they blindly pick the career they'll stick with for the rest of their lives. Doon (Harry Treadaway) wants to work in the generator, and for good reason. He suspects Ember's recent trend of blackouts could spell disaster for the city and he wants to solve the problem. Unfortunately, he gets stuck with messenger duty. He quickly trades jobs with Lina (Saoirse Ronan from Atonement), who had drawn pipe worker. At the very least, he'll be working close to the generator.The Mayor of Ember (Bill Murray) seems totally unaffected by the blackouts or anything else. Since he presides over a city with no trade, no budget, and has no one else to answer to, the Mayor just eats all year and waits for Assignment Day, his only responsibility. Doon's father (Tim Robbins) is the exact opposite; he realizes something is wrong with Ember, but seems somehow afraid to address the problem. What lies underneath that fear?I was a huge admirer of Gil Kenan's Monster House, which is one of the best animated movies of the past half-decade. The director has a bigger box of crayons here, but the result is a little more detached than it should be. I think part of the issue is that Doon and Lina, who we know all along will be our heroes, don't spend much time together in the beginning of the film. Theirs is a friendship of convenience for the story, but it should be more. However, there's no faulting the ingenuity of the story nor Kenan's overall vision for the film. Here's an odd note: The City was built in the same site where the Titanic was constructed about 100 years ago. For the purposes of re-shoots earlier this year, Kenan and his crew reportedly used the same enormous water tank used by the film Titanic in 1997. His movie is somewhere in between the results of those events.

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