Jupiter Ascending
(M) 2.5 out of 5
Director: The Wachowskis.
Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton.
"BAFFLING" is perhaps the best word to describe the latest directorial effort from The Wachowskis.
This far-flung space opera is as confounding as the filmmaking siblings' career.
Since the ground-breaking The Matrix, they have directed the much-maligned Matrix sequels, the downright-hated Speed Racer, and the ambitious bomb Cloud Atlas.
While Jupiter Ascending doesn't deserve to be much-maligned or downright-hated, it has all the makings of an ambitious bomb.
It also shares a destiny with Cloud Atlas - both films are flawed cult-classics-in-waiting.
Kunis stars as the wonderfully named Jupiter Jones, a young woman who works as a cleaner with her mother and aunt, blissfully unaware that she is set to have a pivotal role in a messy feud between three members of the galaxy's most powerful family (played by Redmayne, Booth, and Middleton).
Jupiter's blissful ignorance is shattered when various aliens come looking for her. Among them is Caine (Tatum), a part-human, part-wolf, part-albino former soldier hired to keep her alive and take her to the other side of the galaxy to meet her destiny.
The reason Jupiter Ascending is likely to live on with a niche following is there is so much going on and so much to be impressed about, but it's too much.
They've created an incredibly rich universe of human hybrids, multiple alien races, and futuristic technologies that has the potential to be pored over by obsessives keen to learn everything about the Wachowskis worlds.
Unfortunately, such depth and design comes at the expense of such mainstream concerns as trying not to confuse the audience at every turn.
So much of the film is spent wondering "why did they do that?", "what is that?", "who is that?" and "what the hell is going on?". There is bound to be a longer edit out there that takes its time to make sense of its characters, worlds, allegiances and "what the hell is going on?".
Seemingly important elements are given incredibly short-shrift, yet a difficult-to-follow spaceship dogfight over Chicago drags on, as does the fiery conclusion. Other bits make no sense whatsoever and, perhaps most bizarrely, one entire sequence that pokes fun at bureaucracy appears to have dropped in from a completely different movie, most likely Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy or perhaps Terry Gilliam's Brazil (Gilliam cameos just to ram that point home).
Amid its dumb mistakes, there is something oddly engaging at work. The Wachowskis have made a sporadically beautiful film containing a handful of engaging characters.
Kunis and Tatum are fun as Jupiter and Caine, and Bean's side role as Stinger is equal parts intriguing and perplexing, much like the film itself.
Meanwhile Redmayne, likely to add an Oscar to his awards cabinet on February 22, is just plain odd as chief villain Balem, who he portrays as some kind of cross between a lizard and Prince Phillip and who says everything in a cross between a hiss and a whisper (a hissper?).
Balem is just one moment of weirdness in a film that consistently asks you to accept weird things, often with little explanation. While not having everything explained is refreshing in this age of dumbed-down blockbusters, this goes too far in the other direction.
Ultimately, Jupiter Ascending is like a Rubik's Cube - initially exciting and colourful, but predominantly baffling.
