Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Movie review: ‘City of Ember,’ 2½ stars

Adventure movies for kids are hit-or-miss; keeping it moderately entertaining without resorting to poopie, booger or flatulence jokes is a Hollywood skill in short supply.

Director Gil Kenan did a fair job of that with his 2006 film, “Monster House,” and does it again with “City of Ember,” based on Jeanne Duprau’s novel.

But while “City of Ember” breaks strong out of the gate on the wings of its way-cool visuals, the story is on the thin side for anyone much beyond age 13.

Kenan clearly was more interested in Ember than in its inhabitants, and you can’t blame him — the city has more character.

It’s a damp, crumbling, claustrophobic amalgamation of oddly-angled houses, off-center lampposts and narrow, brick-lined streets, all covered with a thin layer of soot and rust, buried deep underground and lit by countless electric lights dangling high overhead.

The city, surrounded by what its inhabitants presume is an endless void of dark unknown, is powered by an elaborately Goldbergesque system of pipes and wires, all leading to a gigantic electric generator.

A quick prologue explains that Ember is the product of an undefined (but easily guessed) apocalypse; a group of scientists and engineers (the legendary “Builders” of Emberian lore) constructed the city as a safe haven for several hundred people who hopefully would survive and carry on the human race.

The Builders envisioned isolating this hardy band for 200 years; that’s how much canned food was stocked and that’s how long they built the generator to last. They put cryptic follow-on instructions in a small lockbox to be passed down from mayor to mayor until its 200-year timer dinged and the lockbox popped open.

But the box went missing when the seventh mayor had a heart attack. Now the 200 years are up and the balky generator is plunging the city into blackouts that have the citizenry in a panic.

It falls to two youngsters to unlock the lockbox’s secrets. They are sprightly Lina (Saoirse Ronan), a descendant of that seventh mayor who found the magic box in her dotty grandmother’s closet but can’t figure out what its contents mean, and her pal Doon (Harry Treadaway), whose dad (Tim Robbins) harbors a secret that will help them in their quest.

Kenan keeps the pace brisk, but once the newness of the production design subsides, the story turns a bit mechanical as Lina and Doon piece together the puzzle of the lockbox amid a series of merely passable special effects that seems like a theme-park ride waiting to happen. The end of the line, though, brings what was, for me, the film’s most sublime moment, when Lina finds a dusty sign bearing the exquisitely Zen message: “You are there.”

“City of Ember” isn’t likely to wow many adults. But kids who aren’t too jaded (yet) should be into it, even if it’s not on a par with the “Harry Potter” franchise or anything from Pixar.

Fact is, decent offerings for the younger crowd are comparatively scant amid the nonstop swirl of sex, violence and gross-outs at the octoplex, so parents shouldn’t let these opportunities slip by.

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Rated PG for mildly intense action and one really ugly giant mole. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.