City Of Ember

Dystopian Family Film

Hi All,

On today’s post I am going to discuss movie I re watched recently. It is more of a family friendly film, as opposed to the usual content I like to write about which has no happy ending, and is usually set in a bleak hopeless society.

The movie has a very straight forward concept in which a group of scientists create an underground city/society to prevent the extinction of humankind.

A box is passed to the mayor which consists of the instructions of returning to the surface, and this box is to be inherited by every succeeding mayor, and will open after 200 years.

Unfortunately the box is lost over time, along with it’s knowledge of getting back to the surface world.

The people who occupy the city carry on living there with no knowledge of the surface world and a rapidly deteriorating world, which is losing it’s power supply, and food rations dangerously low.

The main protagonists are a pair of teens Lina Mayfleet, and Doon Harrow who are played by Saoirse Ronan and Harry Treadaway respectively. They both work to unearth the secret of getting out of the city once they discover the box left by scientists well over 200 years ago.

Though whilst working to uncover these secrets, they are pursued by the greedy and corrupt Mayor Cole, who is played by Bill Murray, who has hidden food rations for himself, and is happy to let the rest of the city die, to escape by himself.

As I mentioned at at he start, this is more of a feel good film, and is more family friendly. The film is filled with plenty of fun, excitement and comedy coming from Bill Murray role as the mayor.

I would rate this film at around 7/10, due to the fact it is slightly more predictable than other other dystopian films, and it is one which you can watch with the family.

The film definitely has it’s interesting moments, but would be enjoyed more by a younger audience as it needs a bit of imagination in order to entice it’s audience, as well as it’s main characters being quite young.

Personally the film makes me think as to whether human beings are as simplistic as the film suggests, as if people would happily live in this city over a period of 200 years without an ounce of curiosity of what exists beyond what they know. Though this being a family film, you have to overlook certain areas of the plot which have flaws.

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