The science fiction and fantasy elements give The Last Mimzy a nice sheen and the low-key special effects are effective. Toward the end of the movie, I was trying to figure out why he was in it.Īs family friendly adventures go, The Last Mimzy is a cut below the recent Bridge to Terabithia, with which it shares the same target demographic. Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson are rather boring and it feels like 75% of Michael Clarke Duncan's part wound up on the cutting room floor. Rainn Wilson and Kathryn Hahn have their moments, but both seem over-earnest.
None of the adults, however, can be said to impress. They are cute without being annoying and their dialogue delivery is unforced. Since The Last Mimzy focuses on the young protagonists, it's necessary for them to be credible, and they are. This is Wryn's first major role and it represents the first credit of any sort for her co-star, Chris O'Neil. The acting by the children, especially Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, is effective. The film has a pro-ecological message but it is shoehorned into the opening and closing futuristic bookend sequences. and the movie throws in a little Zathura along the way. The film's last act doesn't try to hide its similarities to E.T. An attempt is made to present Michael Clarke Duncan's character as more than a gung-ho military type, but he doesn't get enough screen time. Part of the movie's mid-section explores the superhuman abilities of the children, but this is lost in the rush to the finish line. The Last Mimzy moves far too fast to become boring, but it frustrates with the possibilities it leaves untapped.
And Mimzy begins to lose her effectiveness because she needs to be sent back to the dying future from whence she came. Meanwhile, a Homeland Security official (Michael Clarke Duncan) is narrowing in on Emma and Noah as the cause of a major blackout. Wilder at home to tell her she has two very special children. He and his hippy girlfriend, Naomi (Kathryn Hahn), visit Mrs. Even though the kids' parents (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson) are largely ignorant of the changes in their offspring, Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), is not. She is able to levitate and he shows quantum leaps in science class. The kids hide these items in their room but the longer they remain in their position, the smarter Noah and Emma become. It contains various otherworldly items, including an ordinary-looking stuffed rabbit named Mimzy that speaks telepathically to Emma. While on vacation, they discover a mysterious black box on the beach.
The basic story concerns two Seattle grade-schoolers, ten-year old Noah (Chris O'Neil) and his younger sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn). Every time the movie pulls us under its adventurous spell, it changes gears and we have to get acclimatized again. The Last Mimzy feels rushed and incomplete, and the tidy ending doesn't help. The Last Mimzy rushes so quickly from one plot element to the next that it loses things like character development and atmosphere along the way. What is The Last Mimzy about? Is it a cautionary tale about an impending ecological disaster? An attack on governmental intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens? A superhero tale? A primer on New Age spiritualism? The 2007 answer to E.T.? It wants to be all these things and more, but there's a difference between doing something and doing something well. The movie's poor focus and scattershot approach, while not without its charms, represents the kind of product that may divert children but will likely puzzle adults with its inconsistency. With The Last Mimzy, Shaye steps back into the director's chair for the first time in over a decade-and-a-half, adapting Lewis Pagett's 1943 short story into a family film. New Line honcho Bob Shaye has been in the news a lot recently, primarily because of an increasingly acrimonious feud with Peter Jackson over profits from The Lord of the Rings.