The Last Mimzy

The appeal of a movie like “The Last Mimzy” for college students, or anyone for that matter, is perhaps not very strong. Be that as it may, readers of the short story on which the film is loosely based might be more numerous than expected, and the fact that Rainn Wilson of NBC’s “The Office” plays one of the key characters might lure those who enjoy his weekly neurotic antics.
As for me, following the gore bath that was “Grindhouse,” I felt I needed to look to a more family friendly fare that would provide a blood-free two hours of cinema. Unfortunately my choice of films left me feeling almost as assaulted, only without the fun stuff that made last week’s movie worthwhile.
It’s not that “Mimzy” had particularly offensive part, but the sum total was grandly underwhelming, taking an interesting idea and dumbing it down to a cheap knock off of many other better movies.
As I’ve said, the movie is adapted from a short story called Mimsy were the Borogoves, by Lewis Padgett. The title is taken from a line of the nonsense poem sung by the Jabberwocky in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There.
While the short story, with strict simplicity even while dealing with a rather far fetched idea, suggests a clever idea about how Carroll might have come up with such a poem, the movie succeeds only in making what was once a simple short story into something about as nonsensical as the poem itself.
Oh yes, to be sure, sub plot upon sub plot has been added, it’s been modernized which is not so much an issue when it comes to the look of the movie, but what ought to be a children’s story is hampered by sudden introduction of topics like The Patriot Act and global pollution. There are movies for these subjects; this is not one of them.
The original story told of a scientist from the future that sent two boxes, filled with his child’s discarded toys, into the past. One of these boxes, so the story goes, found its way to the girl who would be Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for the character Alice. A boy and his sister find the other box. They play around with the contents telling their interested parents that they were gifts.
The idea of the whole story is that the minds of humans are structured around Euclidian mathematics, but a young mind, not yet set in its ways, could be structured around a different sort of system and see the world differently, perhaps even move through dimensions and so forth.
In the end of the story the parents have taken away the toys because they have observed the changes being wrought in their children. It is to no avail, for one morning the father comes upon his children as just as they are slipping away into another dimension and he is unable to follow them. On the ground is Carroll’s book opened to the Jabberwocky’s poem.
It’s actually a somewhat depressing story, but an intriguing one nonetheless. The only thing I was intrigued by, as the credits began rolling, was how anyone ever thought the sad movie adaptation would earn a dime.
The viewers are required to wade through scenarios involving kids talking to spiders, palm readings, meditations, some sort of bridge across the universe, a science fair, talk of the blessed children of Tibet, levitating rocks, and sub par acting. Many ideas from the original work are carried through to the film, but they lose their significance when crowded in with all the additions.
I know these kids are young, and to their credit they look the parts completely, but a movie like this that relies so much on children in the lead roles should invest the time to find kids who can convey emotion.
The thing is, we’ve already seen a much better version of this movie, Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” Young kids who encounter and form an emotional bond with something alien, this is not new. Nor is the invasion of the house by government personal, and “Mimzy’s” attempt at portraying destruction of traditional safety doesn’t hold a candle to Spielberg’s.
The children in “E.T.” could act, and the story wasn’t bogged down with superfluous junk, if you didn’t cry watching “E.T.” you pretty much didn’t have a soul. It was and is an amazing movie. But here comes “The Last Mimzy,” or rather here came “The Last Mimzy,” it’s on the last leg of its short theater run.
Rainn Wilson might have at least provided a character to enjoy in his scenes, but he seems to have succumbed to the boring nature of the film for not once did he come across funny, nor was he particularly dramatic, I think the best word to describe him in this movie is “lost,” he needs to find his way back to Scranton.

C+