City of Ember

June 11, 2011

So…fucking…BORING.

I take that back, it was mainly the first half that was ridiculously boring – say, everything up until the RoUS attacks. (A giant mole is certainly a Rodent of Unusual Size, wouldn’t you say?) Everything after the RoUS attack was super exciting, maybe more exciting than it should have been, seeing as how my six year old suggested turning it off. I’m guessing the slow build was intentional, but if we had been sitting in a theater, we wouldn’t have made it 20 minutes without my kids starting a full scale prison riot. I would have just tazed them and dragged them home.

If you’ve seen one post-apocalyptic utopia, you’ve seen them all. Raggedy sweaters, chunky boots, dirty faces – why does the apocalypse look like the Austin, Texas Hipster scene? Maybe it’s a conspiracy perpetuated by pot-smoking Hollywood Costume Designers?

Why did the citizens of the City of Ember remind me of the citizens of Whoville in Horton Hears a Who? Maybe it was their fucked up hair, or maybe their weird names, but it probably because the city was crumbling and they expected the Mayor to do something about it. Is that what mayors are for? I seriously have no fucking idea what my mayor does, but I still like her because she’s a lesbian. I know that after the last hurricane, the previous mayor couldn’t do shit about people being without power for a month, so the people of the City of Ember must be pretty fucking stupid to think that Bill Murray is going to fix anything.

Maybe my son will read the book and I can borrow it to see if it’s any good.