Review of Æon Flux (2005) by Mike J — 17 May 2010

The most disappointing thing about the sci-fi thriller Aeon Flux is not that it's a bad movie.

Don't misunderstand, though. It is bad. It is a career low for all involved, and please note, Charlize Theron was in Children of the Corn III .

But outside of Paramount Pictures shareholders, hardly anyone will be disappointed by that. Anyone who's been paying attention to Flux's plummeting buzz expected it to bomb.

The big disappointment is this: It isn't nearly bad enough.

This futuristic star vehicle, based on Pete Chung's perversely original MTV cartoon series, had every indication of being spectacularly bad.

You know, epic, future ironic T-shirt bad : Showgirls bad. Catwoman bad. Maybe even - and perhaps this was asking too much - Battlefield Earth bad.

Flux should have been a contender. All the red flags are there.

It has two Best Actress Oscar winners - Theron (Monster), as the titular assassin, and Frances McDormand (Fargo) - slumming for big paychecks. It has an acclaimed young independent director (Girlfight's Karyn Kusama) shoehorned into a Hollywood behemoth.

Best (or worst) of all, it has Tinseltown trying to make a somewhat mainstream, PG-13 action flick out of Chung's wonderfully mindbending original concoction. That never goes well. So Paramount's decision not to screen Flux for critics before its theatrical release Friday was just the curdled cream in the gritty coffee.

It's a bummer, then, that Flux is merely lame. Nothing made sense in the cartoon, but that's part of what made it cool. The movie's convoluted plot - stemming from Miss Flux trying to take out a dictator in a futuristic walled city - is ponderous and unoriginal. And while Theron looks great in a skintight catsuit, she has none of the mystery or the danger of her two-dimensional predecessor.

Flux does have a few thrills here and there and some cool production design. Overall, it's not nearly the abomination you'd expect from Paramount's anti-marketing plan. It's just another really bad movie, and perhaps there's nothing worse you could say about Aeon Flux.

(Note: This review originally appeared in the St. Petersburg Times, which owns this material.).