Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *
Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Christina Cole, Nicholas A. Newman, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Ramon Tikaram, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tim Pigott-Smith, James D’Arcy, Jeremy Swift, Vanessa Kirby, Samuel Barnett, Terry Gilliam.
There is no doubting the scale of imagination of the Wachowskis. Other, arguably more highly regarded and even phenomenally charged films such as The Matrix trilogy and the exceptional V for Vendetta, will however be remembered with more fondness than the latest film to escape Andy and Lana’s burgeoning net, the visually stunning but poorly delivered Jupiter Ascending.
Jupiter Jones is the daughter of a Russian immigrant and life is as hard as it is repetitive in modern day Chicago. Consumerism and the soul destroying nature of her job cleaning other people’s toilets is seeing life being chucked down the pan, until one day a being called Caine Wise rescues her from a fate worse than death and her whole life starts to change.
It is somehow implausible to get to grips with that a film that can offer so much visual stimulus, that actually makes sense of the eternal fuss that goes with the 3D agenda with its instinctive consuming nature, can somehow be one of the underwhelming affairs in recent times. Like 2014’s Serena, the premise of offering much in terms of cinematic scope is not realised when it comes to charm, with a couple of honourable exceptions, of the characters or the sheer dullness, even formulaic nature of the written script.
For many watching in 3D, Jupiter Ascending will be the first time in which the medium lives up to its over generous hype, and if there was a way to dissolve the dialogue and in many cases acting by numbers that drags itself alongside it, like a half eaten corpse being carried in a plush new Jaguar XJS with all the mod cons, then the film would be scintillating, an expression of the marvels of 21st century cinema. As it is, the corpse gets to choose the music on the stereo system and never winds down the window, the audience’s brain will have had a treat but it will be tainted by the stench coming off the passenger side of the car.
Even Eddie Redmayne’s and Sean Bean’s imposing statures cannot help the film reach a sensible level of enjoyment and in many ways the only actors to come out of it well are Tuppence Middleton and James D’Arcy, mainly due to their respective roles as Kalique Abrasax and the father of Jupiter Jones being unfathomably small and Tim Piggot-Smith who brings an air of gravitas to his scenes. For Tim Piggot-Smith it’s like watching an actor rehearsing Shakespearean Sonnets in a room with children playing pass the parcel.
Like ordering a three course meal from the most expensive and highly celebrated restaurant in town, only to see the waiter turn up at your table wearing flip flops and Bermuda shorts and placing caviar into tasteless gravy and asking you to shove over whilst he sticks his finger into the wine to make sure its properly chilled, Jupiter Ascending offers much but ultimately leaves you gasping for all the wrong reasons.
If only talking pictures had not been invented, Jupiter Ascending would have been a huge hit, as it is it is a film to see if you can somehow tune out the dialogue with your own choice of music; if the corpse allows you to choose your own tunes that is.
Ian D. Hall