'City of Ember' left incomplete

By Dan Moore

Published Oct. 13, 2008

Since Harry Potter, the trend in young-adult novels and their film equivalents is toward stories that people can luxuriate in - the ones with worlds that are both plausible and unreal, that seem to exist outside of the bounds of the book's plot. "City of Ember," the latest film adaptation after the Potter riches, seems like an extended trailer for one of these, never quite able to find a pace or a point of entry and ending before we care about what's going on.

The story must have been hacked to pieces in editing; it plays out like your friend, suddenly given the ability to turn thoughts into movie scenes, is trying to summarize the plot for you.

"So, there are these kids, Doon and Lina, okay? And they have to save their secret underground city from destruction, because they're about to run out of food and power, except there's no way out and the mayor - dude, the mayor was Bill Murray! But you didn't see him much - he's evil, and anyway, so they have to get out. There's this giant mole, too."

There is a mystery about their underground city and the way it has run out of time, and there's a deep, vital world bubbling up, but the film jumps from place to place at random, assuming all the while that we're deeply invested in its un-drawn characters. There are scenes and casting decisions (in addition to Murray, Tim Robbins plays a role that's barely there) that look to be referencing moments that are no longer intact; subplots and characters are introduced and then discarded without explanation.

It's a shame, because parts of the movie, including its inexplicably high-wattage casting, have turned out wonderfully. The set, sprawling and real-looking, manages to convey the decay and disintegration of Doon and Lina's city far better than the film itself; everything is labeled, cleanly and optimistically, in a way that would be at home in "Mad Men," but it's all covered in dirt or torn and dinged. There's a sense of movement and travel in the set design that's absent in the direction and the writing.

But the film is, in the end, hostage to what it leaves out. Its main characters, Doon and Lina, are given no motivation for anything, let alone the film's action hero machinations, but they're written so melodramatically - one doesn't understand his father, the other must deal with her senile grandmother - that this lack of nuance is magnified instead of hidden. And the final mystery is almost inconsequential in the way it's finally revealed; there's just no time for "Ember"'s mysteries to be mysteries, or for its plot points and characters to linger unresolved.

When the kids discover a way out of their city, they're aided by all of the film's ill-used secondary characters, who come Han Solo-style to their rescue. But as with everything else in the film, their return isn't earned by what has come before it. They appear, and everyone on screen is excited, but the audience is left out of it. And that's, finally, what keeps "Ember" out of Harry Potter territory: It's an interesting world, but there's no place to get into it.