Critics and moviegoers alike usually have the tendency to call them as they see them, says Frank. After all, you can't blame the masses for assessing New Line Cinema executive Bob Shayne's slight family fare The Last Mimzy as an E.T. knockoff for the millennium age. The comparison is obvious and tries to match the whimsical and imaginative spectacle of Steven Spielberg's early eighties memorable, fetching fable. The distinction, of course, is that there's a vast difference between the Oscar-winning filmmaker's little alien that wanted to "phone home" and Shayne's spotty sci-fi narrative that's lucky enough to invite the "compare-and-contrast" vibes.

Although occasionally mystical and emotional in its inspirational mode, The Last Mimzy falls short of its expectations to grasp the aura of an escapist kiddie flick that distinctively startles and probes.

The Last Mimzy is based on the 1943 award-winning short story "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by Henry Kuttner and wife C.L. Moore (a.k.a. Lewis Padgett). Screenwriters Toby Emmerich and Bruce Joel Rubin ("Ghost") concoct an elaborate fairy tale as they want to convey the surreal and sentimental elements behind Kutter's/Moore's soothing blueprint. Unfortunately, the scribers manage to instil Mimzy with the familiar stroking of other notable ditties such as the aforementioned E.T., Contact and A:I (Artificial: Intelligence) ... among others. Sadly, the film never really has an identity of its own as it methodically mimics popular fantasy adventures of yesteryear.

Shayne ("Book of Love"), the co-foundering force behind New Line Cinema, figured on magically producing a stimulating showcase that delivers "the message" amidst the weirdly, fluffy machinations. Shayne's erratic direction gives this muddled melodrama a schizophrenic feel. There are so many philosophical flourishes being thrown into the cluttered mix that Shayne's visionary focus becomes somewhat blurred. Mimzy wants to present this mushy viewpoint on varying aspects that range from environmentalism to electronic cynicism. Consequently, the audience has to digest the wandering spirit of the film's inquiring pulse. The movie's conjecture of lumping together arbitrary thought processes of sceptical forethought registers as pretentiousness.

As for the film's title, it refers to one of the mysterious "toys" that causes freaky incidents to occur in its surrounding boundaries. Siblings Noah and Emma Wilder (Chris O'Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) discover the box of tricky toys/devices and experience the strange occurrences that stem from the head-scratching items. (Witness in particular Emma's fuzzy stuffed bunny holding a bizarre conversation with her-the long-eared talking toy would be named Mimzy). The toys serve as the kids' colourful companions and why not? After all, Noah and Emma have shunned their close human pals to relate to the odd inanimate objects. As the brother-sister tag team becomes attached to the tainted toy Mimzy, the paranormal happenings are magnified beyond curious measures.

Naturally, the kids' involvement with Mimzy and the other suspicious toys are of great concern to their parents (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson). Hey, you'd be cautious too if your offspring suddenly caused a citywide blackout while their beat-up bunny buddy opines about mankind's fragile future. Never mind an E.F. Hutton commercial ad...when Mimzy talks, you better listen! The manufactured environmentalist angle to this gauzy display is enough to make Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth star Al Gore smirk with abandoned glee.

The performances in The Last Mimzy are inconsistent if not well meaning within the soapy material. Newcomers O'Neil and Wryn are adequate as the little lambs being led by the devious devices that foreshadow the self-destructive tendencies of human indifference. They are at times intermittently bland and don't possess the energized enthusiasm of what other seasoned kid performers could have brought to these roles.

Nevertheless, O'Neil and Wryn are adorably effective in the stilted proceedings they're asked to spice up with mischievous cuteness. Both Hutton and Richardson seem invisible and distant by the whole half-hearted whimsy affair. Rainn Wilson (from NBC-TV's "The Office") gives a hearty turn as Noah's inquisitive science teacher and is perhaps the only one having any sense of good-natured awe in this quaint sci-fi spectacle. Michael Clarke Duncan ("The Green Mile", "Sin City") toils as the bulky governmental operative convinced that a terrorist threat is at large.

As a supernatural thriller dressed down in kiddie garb, The Last Mimzy indecisively tosses around its mixed signal that is a crushing blow to a feel-good movie that could have been soundly exploratory in its bid for wacky, wistful wonderment.

Frank Ochieng

© 2007 Frank Ochieng