|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Children Can Identify With 'Mimzy' |
| [DVD Review] Adults may find it thought provoking |
|
Howard Schumann (howard16)  |
 Email Article
 Print Article
|
|
|
|
Published 2007-08-12 08:24 (KST) |
|
|
|
Unlike many adults whose vision has become clouded by the weight of the current materialist paradigm, children generally are much more open to the mystery and wonder of the universe. Most films geared to children, however, lack the vision to portray this wonder, resigning themselves to the conformist drumbeat of ugly monsters and good versus evil confrontations. Robert Shaye's "The Last Mimzy," however, treats children like the caring, intelligent beings that they are, showing an appreciation of interesting and beautiful things that are available beyond iPods, computer games and other forms of commercialized entertainment.
Based on a short story from 1943 by Lewis Padgett, a scientist from the future looks to children from the past to save his dying world. Apparently, the future world is so poisoned that people have to wear alien-looking suits for protection from pollution. As 10-year-old Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neill) and his 6-year-old sister Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) discover an odd-looking box that washes up on the beach near their family's summer home in the Seattle. Washington, area, the door is opened to a non-linear reality that they could have scarcely imagined.
 |
TODAY'S TOP STORIES |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
FROM THE SECTION |
|
|
|
|
| In this reality, small rocks can spin on their own and provide an opening to a different dimension, a glowing crystal allows Noah to teleport objects, a seashell emits strange noises and a stuffed rabbit communicates telepathically and tells Emma that she represents future humanity's last chance. Newly possessed of heightened powers, Noah is able to create a science project that deeply impresses his science teacher Larry White (Rainn Wilson). Larry visits the boy's mother (Joely Richardson) and father (Timothy Hutton) with his girlfriend Naomi (Kathryn Hahn) to tell the parents not only about Noah's science project but also about the boy's notebook, which contains drawings of Tibetan mandalas, images that the teacher has been seeing in dreams.
He explains to the somewhat bewildered parents that mandalas may provide the path to focus meditation on healing the world. Naomi reads the palms of the two children and finds an unusual purity in Emma's palm but neither she nor Larry can understand or interpret the results or the changes taking place in the lives of the children. When Noah's experiments result in a sudden blackout of the entire Seattle area, the Feds naturally become interested. A Homeland Security official (Michael Clarke Duncan) traces the source of the blackout to the Wilder's suburban home and, using the authority of the Patriot Act, storms into their home, confidently filling the role of the villain. If you've seen "E.T.," you know that the children will become the embodiment of calm and reason while the adults remain clueless and panic hysterically at the sight of anything unusual.
I welcome the fact that a major studio has produced a film for children that dares to introduce elements of Eastern mysticism without the usual silliness attending such references. Unfortunately, the film takes a scattershot approach to spirituality, throwing together a smorgasbord of palm reading, meditation, Tibetan mandalas, lucid dreaming, mental telepathy and levitation, in a way that lacks any organic relationship to the film's message. However, while "The Last Mimzy" lacks the imagination and stylistic vision to be a fully satisfying experience, it is nonetheless a timely and entertaining film that children can appreciate and identify with and that adults may find thought provoking. If it can make us all more aware that the infinite affection of children is needed to restore sanity to a troubled world, it will have accomplished something much more profound than spinning rocks.
B+
|
|
©2007 OhmyNews
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
How worried are you about the H1N1 influenza virus? |
|
 |
| * Vote to see the result. |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RSS
Del.icio.us
Digg 
reddit
Y! MyWeb
Comments Note: Kindly refrain from personal attacks and profanity.
.jpg)
