Review of City of Ember (2008) by Erich S — 11 Aug 2012

Sorta like Brazil (the Gilliam film), Bioshock (the game), Wall-E, and Hugo, but nowhere near as clever as any of them. The plot moved along like someone skimming a story for the bits of action, rather than reading through the meat of the text that fleshes out the characters and world.

In the end, you don't feel you know the characters well enough to really root for them, and you don't know the world well enough to truly understand their place in it. I found myself asking questions that were never answered, and being constantly launched down another hallway and another tangent of the plot that came like dry heaves.

Perhaps that's a bit harsh, I guess it's more like they had TOO much story and not enough time to tell it, so they just said, "Ok, we'll just make a bunch of cuts, leave in the important bits, and the audience can use their imagination to fill in the rest".

Not a BAD film overall, and quite visually striking. Would I recommend a viewing? Sure. But don't come expecting a cinematic masterpiece. It's poor pacing, 2-dimensional characters, sloppy storytelling, plot holes, and unanswered questions held together by beautiful cinematography and a great premise.

This is the kind of film that could have become a cult film if it had achieved the certain naive charm it was going for.