Pages

Friday, April 13, 2007

Movie Review: The Last Mimzy


In a garden filled with a sea of color, a woman tells a story to attentive children.
A story of importance for it saved humanity.
It is the story of The Last Mimzy where two siblings, the elder, Noah (Chris O’Neil), a boy, and the younger, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), a girl, who found a strange box while vacationing over Easter weekend with their parents.

In the box were strange objects and a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy.
Being kids, Noah and Emma are fascinated with their newfound toys and without warning they developed amazing abilities playing with them.
Their mom, Jo (Joely Richardson), felt distant as a result of it.
Their dad, David (Timothy Hutton), think nothing of it, choosing to believe that his once ordinary kids are just growing up to their potential.

Stranger things followed and they do not go unnoticed.
Noah became incredibly intelligent in science while Emma developed psychic abilities.
These abilities are out of this world, amazing yet terrifying.
Noah’s science teacher, Larry (Rainn Wilson) and his spiritual fiancĂ©e, Naomi (Kathryn Hahn) is the first to take an interest in the children.
Larry noticed the strange drawings that Noah had drawn were those he kept seeing in his dreams.
These drawings hold spiritual meanings to humanity's past and future.
The toys even caused a massive state blackout that alerted the authorities.

Just what are these toys about?
What purpose do they serve?
There are questions that needed answers.
And they all point to one source, Mimzy the rabbit, that only Emma can relate.

The Last Mimzy is a movie loosely adapted from the acclaimed science fiction short story, Mimsy Were the Borogoves, written in 1943 by Lewis Padgett (the pseudonym of husband and wife team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore).
I read the excerpt of the short story which can be found on the official website and it was brilliantly written, detailed and intriguing.
The movie however fell rather short on these qualities despite the names behind the scene that were involved in films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Perhaps simplification was considered so kids can understand the film better.
I really do not know but mostly the movie is unspectacular, preferring a more direct story telling approach.
The trailer was well done however so it became contradicting.

The stars of the movie no less were the siblings, Noah and Emma.
After all, children are the key to the future.
This focus is consistent throughout the film.
Being a family film, the movie speaks to remind parents and adults to pay more careful attention to the children and their development.
Negative exposures, which are becoming more and more apparent at this modern age, can affect the future.
And the children are the future.

On a less serious perspective, which everyone can relate, is imagination.
In the movie we can see the difference between an adult and a child.
The thinking process, the judgment, and the way the world is seen are in contrast.
Children are the world’s best teachers in imagination and creativity.
Everyone can do with some imagination on a daily level to make life meaningful.
Watching the children, their innocence, pure nature and energy, an adult may realized that what once were simple joy can no longer be found in themselves.
We all seem to have forgotten what simple joy was when there used to be a child in all of us.
Where is that child now? Lost?

Mimzy is just a stuffed rabbit you say.
That is because you probably haven't heard Emma.
“This is Mimzy. She's my teacher. She teaches me everything.”
Emma will tell you with a sparkle in her eyes.
That is why perhaps “The future is trying to tell us something”.


Movie link: http://www.mimzy.com/

No comments: