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City Of Ember Widescreen Screener
DVD, Region One, English Dolby Digital 5.1, French and Spanish Dolby Surround
2.0, English SDH and Spanish Subtitles
Starring: Bill Murray, Tim
Robbins, Saoirse Roman, Harry Treadaway, Martin Landau, and Toby Jones
Distributed by Twentieth Century
Fox Home Entertainment
Reviewed By Mark Rivera
At a
point when the modern world as we know it is coming to an end, a group of
scientists had created an underground city and set a timer for 200 years before
the generator that powers the city will stop and the descendents of those who
will live in the city can hopefully reclaim the Earth. Since they fear
descendents might despair in all humanity has lost, they entrust a case to the
city’s first Mayor and subsequently it was passed down to his or her
descendents so that when the time is right, the secret to leaving the City can
be revealed. Unfortunately over the decades, the line of good Mayors fails and
the box becomes forgotten. Two hundred years later, power outages are increasing
and the city’s current Mayor, played by Bill Murray, cares more about saving
his own skin than the fate of the people who will be helpless in the dark. So
two teenagers find the box and discover the contents, they decide to take a risk
and find out if there is a way out of Ember, which is forbidden, in the hope
they can find a new home for the city’s people since it is apparent that the
generator is seeing it’s last days.
City Of Ember
is an entertaining children’s film with giant creatures and performances by
seasoned stars like Tim Robbins, Bill Murray, Martin Landau and Toby Jones that
serve the material well. The film is not campy, but it is definitely lighter
than what one might expect in a story like this. I have never read the book
series this film is based on so some of my observations may not be correct
because the look of the city itself from the surface point of view seems like it
belongs in another movie and reminded me terribly of the production design gone
wrong in an over produced Hollywood stinker. It just somehow doesn’t look
right to me. The idea of the people becoming so carried away in rituals that
have lost their meaning in a crumbling city reminded me a bit of Mervyn
Peake’s Gormenghast though
not nearly as extreme as that series.
The
film moves fast, but most of it takes place in the city and the actual escape is
rather quick with little action. Still I enjoyed this film a lot more than I
expected to and while I normally do not review screeners unless they are final
product as do many of my colleagues, I thought this deserved a review because
for what it is, City Of Ember
deserves a look and I am actually surprised that Twentieth Century Fox Home
Entertainment has released it only as a bare bones DVD without any real special
features and I would have thought that a film like this would have been released
on Blu-ray too instead of only on DVD. The aspect ratio of the anamorphic
widescreen presentation appears to be about (2.35:1) and looks great. The
standard English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack found on most standard
definition DVDs these days and a French and Spanish Language Dolby Surround
Soundtrack are provided as options along with English Subtitles for the Deaf and
Hearing Impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles. A few trailers that include Igor,
Marley & Me, and another Dr.
Dolittle film are the only extra items
included on the disc. How about the trailer for City Of Ember?
I
hope Fox will release this film on Blu-ray with some real extra value material,
but I like the film itself as is to recommend it as rental for casual viewers
and a purchase for fans. City Of Ember is
available on DVD-Video now at retailers on and offline courtesy of Twentieth
Century Fox Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2009 By Mark Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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