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Derek Malcolm's rating
City of Ember is best left beneath Earth
By
Derek Malcolm
9 Oct 2008
Something weird has happened to Planet Earth: it’s in pitch dark. But builders have constructed an underground city that will last for precisely 200 years with a huge generator that will give its inhabitants light. Unfortunately, it is getting old and frail. Escape is the only option. But how?
Gil Kenan’s fantasy has two doughty teenagers, one a pipework assistant, the other a messenger, trying to find a way out into a world where, one day, the sun will rise again.
They are played by Soairse Ronan and Harry Treadaway with some elan. Bill Murray does a cameo as Ember City’s corrupt mayor, while Mackenzie Crook, Martin Landau and Tim Robbins are among the older members of a doomed populace.
Alas, for all the rich production values and well-known cast, City of Ember falters because of both a very ordinary screenplay and dramatic detail that turns around as if there was no tomorrow. You admire the way it looks but it is a penance to get through.
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