Review of The Last Mimzy (2007) by Corey P — 07 Aug 2010

Why Doesn't Anyone Understand Science?

For the last time, people, mutations are not inherently bad. They aren't. There's a two-headed snake in a jar in this movie, and its appearance is in the middle of a discussion about mutation, and it's explicitly said that this can happen to us. The important thing to know, however, is that humans with mutations that extreme are never born at all. They can't even survive in the womb, and the mother miscarries. The closest we get is conjoined twins, which aren't actually a mutation. However, you are who you are today because of constant mutations over the last few billion years. Yes, all right. Most mutations actually are dangerous. Certain cancers are caused by mutations in, initially, a single cell. (Your whole body won't mutate at once, you see; any mutation will only affect a single bit of DNA in a single cell and only gets passed on when that cell divides.) A large percentage of mutations are benign, too. They just don't do anything. However, beneficial mutations do happen. It is believed that the last large-scale mutation in the human genome is the one which permitted lactose tolerance in adults, which is why that particular trait isn't shared through the whole of the human population yet. So.

Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil) is a typical bored elementary school boy. (Although he was thirteen at the time, he seems younger and is explicitly shown to attend an elementary school.) He and his family go on a trip for spring break to their vacation home on Whidbey Island, up in the San Juan Islands. (Though the ferry they're shown to take won't get them there.) He and his sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), find this box of stuff there, including a stuffed rabbit she calls Mimzy. Noah rapidly discovers that he can, for example, teleport a Sprite can, ensuring as he does that its logo is clearly displayed. They return home having acquired all sorts of powers and things from the bits and pieces in the box. Noah starts drawing complicated mandala patterns, which astonishes his science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), and Mr. White's fiancee, Naomi Schwartz (Kathryn Hahn). They determine that there is something Deep going on, and when Noah manages to shut off the power for half of Washington, Homeland Security, in the person of Nathanial Broadman (Michael Clarke Duncan), gets involved.

I don't even know where to begin. I found the whole thing maddening, frankly. For one thing, did anyone have a separate science teacher in elementary school? Leaving aside that the teaching he does shows that he is woefully ignorant in biology, did your elementary school even have a lab like the one he's shown teaching in? Since Mr. White is the only one of Noah's teachers shown, why have him as a separate teacher in a separate classroom? Why not have him as Noah's teacher who happens to be interested in teaching the kids science? (Though, again, bad science.) Much emphasis is made over the course of the movie about Emma's "purity," but what does that even mean? She isn't free of mutations; the average person has three mutations at least which differ from their parents' cells which came together to form that person. And again, even leaving that aside, we are human because of mutation. The reason our DNA is so close to that of a chimpanzee is that our mutations haven't separated us much yet. There is no such thing as genetic purity, and if they mean spiritual purity, why all the talk of genetics? And how would it show on her palm in the first place? When Naomi first showed astonishment at its appearance, I assumed it was because some mark from the "putting her hand into the glowy thing and having it dissolve" was there.

I'm also really not clear on the workings of the stuff from the box. I don't understand how a stuffed rabbit is supposed to be . . . gathering genetic material, I guess . . . to save humanity by . . . bringing it to the future? Yeah, made no sense. Made no sense why the glowy thing could transport Sprite cans and blow out the power over hundreds of square miles and somehow make spiders spin webs that aren't physically possible for them to spin. (He shows several working together, which they don't, and has them spinning the kind we think of when we think of spider webs only as a bridge with no support, which they can't.) Some of the requirements for sending Mimzy back home (spoiler!) didn't make sense; if the glowy thing were strong enough to somehow shut off power over Western Washington, what did they need the Wilders' generator for? There was some vague reference to Lewis Carroll which is apparently made much more clear in the original short story but is just left hanging here. On the one hand, the interference of Homeland Security would make sense if you thought the power outage was the result of a terrorist attack, but on the other hand, if you knew about the history of major region-wide power outages, why would you?

So yeah. I think the reason children's movies are looked down on so, and this is probably true of children's books, too, is that so many of the hyped ones are just bad. Now, yes, there are quite a lot of good ones, and we'll be getting to the last two Harry Potter movies just as soon as they come out. But I do know quite a lot of people who speak disparagingly of children's entertainment. It may stem from the belief on the part of the creators that just because children are uneducated and, let's be honest, immature, they're stupid. It isn't true. When I was a child, I could handle the deaths of Matthew Cuthbert and Captain Crewe and Mr. Hooper. I could understand why Dorothy had to leave the Magic Belt in Oz or else see it face the same fate as the lost Silver Slippers. And, important to this story, I could handle that sometimes, in fact often, the adults were right. Yes, Mrs. Rachel Lynde was wrong to say what she did to Anne, but Anne was still wrong to yell at her about it. She was definitely wrong to smash her slate over Gilbert Blythe's head. And while Dorothy loved it in Oz, she knew that Auntie Em and Uncle Henry missed her while she was there. And while Pippi Longstocking was special and exciting, there was still something missing about her. Which was that she didn't have grown-ups around to take care of her.