City of Ember

This year I have seen two post-apocalyptic movies about Earthlings returning to terra firma after some cataclysm, Disney’s WALL-E and the yet-unreleased Terra. City of Ember is the third, and this time humans are tucked away in an underground city for two hundred years, with instructions on how to leave the city passed down generation to generation through the office of the mayor.

Except something goes wrong, and the instructions are misplaced for nearly half a century. When the power source for the city begins to wind down, two clever teens must figure out the secret of getting out of Ember and back to the surface before their world is plunged into darkness.

City of Ember is not without its faults. The performances are merely adequate, and Bill Murray, as the mayor, never seems to inhabit the character. It’s Murray up there reading lines, and it’s a distraction. I could go on about the gloomy set design or the holes in the script, but I won’t. City of Ember is an intriguing family film that would appeal to older kids and teens, and is at its best a passable couple of hours.

** out of 5 stars