Above: "What do you mean we're living in a manhole."
Not reading the book must help, I guess, because if City Of Ember ever got something right, it was arousing my curiosity. If you’ve read the novel by Jeanne Duprau, then there’s a ninety percent chance you’ll go, “The book was so much better!”
Like Michael Bay’s The Island, City Of Ember deals with a bunch of people living in some kind of a shut-in world, unaware of anything beyond its borders – in this case piles and piles of trash and sewage pipelines. Because that’s where they’re living in – an underground sewage. Oh, you may say it isn’t, but come on, no self-respecting designer would come up with a city embalm so like the circular tell-tale design of a street manhole.
The movie begins with a back-to-the-past montage detailing what a group of Very Important Peoples did to lock everyone into the hellhole, but inadequately explains why. Whatever it is, the only thing that’s supporting life in the underground is a gigantic generator, which gives the city its much-needed power and source of light. You know, since there’s no sky for a sun to begin with. Things are not going well in Ember Land; generator failures are getting frequent and food is growing scarce. Like being on the Axiom in Wall-E, there is of course a way to get back to the surface of the Earth – a set of instructions hidden in a box handed down from the city’s line of mayors. Said box goes missing, and is accidentally re-discovered by the lead characters, who proceed to follow the instructions within to break free from the city in ways that will do Nicholas Cage proud in National Treasure.
I’ll give the film a pat on the back for its set design though, maybe even its character design for the giant mole-like creature which terrorises the city’s dark alleyways, but here’s the problem: City Of Ember never peaks at any point. It’s not boring, but neither is it thrilling, and never fulfills the level of excitement such a story premise could - should - bring. When the characters discover what looks to be part of the er, pincers, of a rhino beetle the length of an arm, you begin to wonder if they’re a race of very tiny people, or whether they shrunk over time, or…I dunno. I’m assuming this has to do with either me not reading the novel, or a bad job at adapting it into a screenplay, but the muddled writing does the movie a disservice not even great set designs can hide.
The casting of unfamiliar faces for the lead roles is an effort worth appreciating, but unfortunately does no good to the film. The acting is medicore at best; City Of Ember feels like a film the cast and crew could afford to have given more to. There’s a sort of coldness to it, and it reeks of a defeat at the box office even before trying.
(First published at InCinemas)
