Jupiter Ascending review: Dramatic narrative lost in space

By Jane FreeburyFeb. 20, 2015, 9 p.m.

The Wachowskis' latest sci-fi adventure is a CGI feast, but it lacks compelling ideas.

JUPTER ASCENDING (M) General release

Half an hour in, after several close shaves with evil alien forces, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) arrives at a farmhouse set in peaceful cornfields. The extraterrestrials in hot pursuit arrive soon after, but not before she hears that she is royalty, a challenge to the authority of those who want her dead, and destined for great things. Only the day before she was a cleaner, scrubbing toilets, so it seems there was something in the alignment of planets when she was born after all.

Jupiter Ascending is the latest from the Wachowskis, writer-director-producers Andy and Lana, whose Matrix trilogy was a landmark in its time. The Matrix concept was bold and the look original in a postmodern kind of way. The Wachowskis have the same sort of thing going on visually here, a collision of a high-tech futurism with aspects of our historical and mythological past - but not so much in the way of ideas to pin it all down.

Jupiter learns that the people of Earth are being systematically harvested and liquidated to create a serum in which alien overlords bathe regularly to maintain their smooth and toned youth. Keeping the ravages of age at bay is possible at 14,000 years of age, it seems. The exploitation of the masses, a familiar theme in sci-fi, has a nasty twist here.

That said, there is a wealth of detail in the Wachowskis' backstory, but it adds little persuasive drama to this narrative. A compilation of details that adds little to the eye-candy visuals, however, there are good actors at work here, wrestling with a woeful script.

Eddie Redmayne, so credible in The Theory of Everything and vying for an Oscar next week, may be hoping the judges won't have seen him here before they cast their vote. He has done the only thing he could with his part as Balem, rival to his siblings in the Abrasax royal family, and camped it up.

Terry Gilliam is clearly enjoying himself in his cameo. As Minister of Seals and Signets he is suitably Pythonesque and his scene in Jupiter's journey through bureaucratic absurdity tailor-made for the director of Brazil.

And Channing Tatum, of course. It has to be said that Jupiter is no superwoman. She is important to the future of the human race, but it's ex-military hunter Caine Wise (Tatum), her self-appointed guardian who keeps arriving in the nick of time in his flying boots to save her. His persistence can only be the work of a man in love, and so it is.

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Jupiter Ascending review: Dramatic narrative lost in space