In the midst of the previews last month was a pair of children, cgi, and a picture of Alice Liddell. Old Dogfood thinks to himself: "Self, it looks as if they've made a movie of Mimsy Were the Borogoves." And, sure enough, even in the credits of the preview was the title with its author, Lewis Padgett (a pseudonem of the great Henry Kuttner).
http://www.gwillick.com/Spacelight/kuttner.html
I was braced.
And now its here. Possessing a saddening 57% tomatometer rating, there were enough glowing recommendations to make me think a lot of people may have missed the point. The theater was a little triplex in a less trendy mall in South Orange County, but the Sunday afternoon show was acceptably attended by parents and children, especially little girls (there was one gaggle of eight or nine). The noise subsided once the movie got going, and children and adults both fell under its spell.
To say that it diverges from its source is to say 2001 diverges from The Sentinel. Mimsy Were the Borogoves is a small classic from the golden age of science fiction short stories, a period that also gave us Who Goes There? (The Thing) and Farewell to the Master (The Day the Earth Stood Still). But it essentially posits that "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, the poem in Through the Looking Glass, contains a code that the children in the short story come to decode, and what happens when they do.
The Last Mimzy expands this to encompass time travel, ecology and the environment, the need for action to avert coming disaster, and good old fashioned mysticism. I greatly enjoyed it, though the ending is a little bit of a disappointment, as if the buildup couldn't really be lived up to, in the manner of Apocalypse Now. It does owe a good deal to the structure of E.T.. and a good many reviewers diss it as "not understanding what made E.T. work", to name but one, but I don't know if the relative restraint of The Last Mimzy is a good alternative to Spielberg emotional manipulating.
And when all is said and done, it's just a sci-fi picture for kids. And as that I think it succeeds rather well. It might turn out to be a real sleeper success story, and we may all be seeing little Mimzy bunnies come Christmas.
http://www.gwillick.com/Spacelight/kuttner.html
I was braced.
And now its here. Possessing a saddening 57% tomatometer rating, there were enough glowing recommendations to make me think a lot of people may have missed the point. The theater was a little triplex in a less trendy mall in South Orange County, but the Sunday afternoon show was acceptably attended by parents and children, especially little girls (there was one gaggle of eight or nine). The noise subsided once the movie got going, and children and adults both fell under its spell.
To say that it diverges from its source is to say 2001 diverges from The Sentinel. Mimsy Were the Borogoves is a small classic from the golden age of science fiction short stories, a period that also gave us Who Goes There? (The Thing) and Farewell to the Master (The Day the Earth Stood Still). But it essentially posits that "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, the poem in Through the Looking Glass, contains a code that the children in the short story come to decode, and what happens when they do.
The Last Mimzy expands this to encompass time travel, ecology and the environment, the need for action to avert coming disaster, and good old fashioned mysticism. I greatly enjoyed it, though the ending is a little bit of a disappointment, as if the buildup couldn't really be lived up to, in the manner of Apocalypse Now. It does owe a good deal to the structure of E.T.. and a good many reviewers diss it as "not understanding what made E.T. work", to name but one, but I don't know if the relative restraint of The Last Mimzy is a good alternative to Spielberg emotional manipulating.
And when all is said and done, it's just a sci-fi picture for kids. And as that I think it succeeds rather well. It might turn out to be a real sleeper success story, and we may all be seeing little Mimzy bunnies come Christmas.
)
