JUPITER ASCENDING

2015 / Director. The Wachowskis.
Review by Shaun Crawford. 

While not as catastrophic as some would have you believe, it's not great. The Wachowski's latest is a stock-standard heroes journey, so much so that it's a shade away from being a remake of THE WIZARD OF OZ - with anti-gravity roller skates. Seriously.

It certainly doesn't lack ambition. The film is an amalgam of a half-dozen (better) sci-fi influences. There's more than a hint of DUNE, at times Terry Gilliam's BRASIL gets a look in and there's a pinch Russell Mulchahy's HIGHLANDER too. It wouldn't surprise if Scottish sci-fi scribe Iain M Banks' Culture novels got a thank you note. It's a shame they all side uneasily beside each other rather than being greater than the sum of its parts.

For all of its spectacle (and there's plenty) the picture lacks heart, connection and, at times, logic. Mila Kunis spends the first half of the film being spectacularly useless (and her lazy left eye progressively gets worse too) and Channing Tatum, inexplicably, spends a lot of his time going into battle sans shirt? These small fumbles aside we have to remember this is a sci-fi adventure and since THE MATRIX redefined the action film, how do the siblings hold up in this? Theyre lively, even if they feel like they have been designed by an epileptic kid on speed.

In the end JUPITER ASCENDING feels like a big-budget episode of BABYLON 5 meets FLASH GORDON. Daft fun but completely soulless.

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