Starring Harry Treadaway, Saoirse Ronan. Written by Caroline Thompson, based on the novel by Jeanne Duprau. Directed by Gil Kenan. (PG) 95 min. Opens Oct 10.
Maybe it’s fitting that a global-warming allegory be as concerned about its own environment as it is about the real-world one it mirrors, but the makers of City of Ember seem downright distracted by the unnatural beauty of the on-screen world they’ve created. And, like the incandescent bulbs burning like a thousand tiny, dying stars above the movie’s titular town, the set design, fantastic as it is, uses up so much energy there’s little left to power the story’s filaments.
Based on Jeanne Duprau’s novel, the film is set roughly two centuries from now in Ember, an underground city housing what’s left of civilization after some unnamed apocalypse. Technology is stuck in the mid-20th century and rotting fast — the problem being that Ember and its massive electric generator were designed to last 200 years and, unfortunately, the box containing the city’s founders’ instructions on how to enter back into humanity’s natural habitat has been lost over time. That we’re told all this in an opening flashback sequence is a problem: with the reveal pretty much complete, all we can do is follow along once the box turns up as an heirloom in the hands of a pre-teen foot messenger named Lina (Saoirse Ronan) who, along with an escape-obsessed city worker named Doon (Harry Treadaway), runs afoul of the corrupt, spectacularly blasé mayor (Bill Murray) in her race to save her threadbare civilization.
Numerous routes leading to a deeper treatment of the material are passed up, as are subplots involving Doon’s electrician father (Tim Robbins) and Lina’s hazy family history. The film’s visual aesthetic — which photocopies a page or two from Brazil — ensures that City of Ember works as visual if not narrative art, and the brief Murray-isms are fun. Still, even while Lina and Doon’s quest drums up a faint inner cheer, the sense that director Gil Kenan can’t find a satisfying way to complete the tale doesn’t do much to mitigate the blatant metaphor for ecological doom.