Review: ‘Jupiter Ascending’ falls way short of expectations
“Jupiter Ascending,” starring Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, was an average film at best.
It’s good that the Wachowski brothers chose to move the release of the film from the middle of last summer to the earlier this year. This allowed them to clean up more than 2,000 special effects, which are about the only things worth going to see.
“Jupiter Ascending” starts with a humble beginning as Jupiter Jones (Kunis) cleans homes with her mother for a living in Chicago. As the film goes on, we find out that Jones isn’t who she thinks she is. Rather, she is a member of a royal space family who wants to manipulate her in an effort to control another portion of space, specifically Earth.
The complex nature of the story and how the royal family’s lineage and structure work seem to be over-simplified for the big screen. I think this film would have worked a lot better as a book, so as to expand on how this universe functions.
The acting in this film was admirable but nothing special or extraordinary. Tatum does an adequate job of playing the lower-class boy who wants to find his place in the universe as well as find a woman. Eddie Redmayne and Douglas Booth do satisfactory work as brothers out to try and take control of the universe and bend the rules to meet their means. Kunis plays her part as the lost princess who can’t seem to make sense of the world around her for about an hour of the film. Yet within one intergalactic trip across space, she has apparently studied and developed a finely-tuned knowledge of intergalactic law.
The story is what kills this film. You have no context for what the heck is going on for the first 45 minutes. Then when explanations are given in regards to what’s happening with Jones, things slowly and almost begrudgingly start to make sense. It shouldn’t take the audience that long to figure out what the next hour of the film will be about.
The one thing that keeps this film above water and from falling into the theater abyss is its visual effects. “Jupiter Ascending” is a beautiful film visually that has you traveling the universe in a myriad of well-designed and visually-captivating ships, moving from one beautifully-designed planet after the other. It is a real shame the Wachowski brothers chose not to explore even more worlds.
The action sequences in the film are very appealing as well, but they had a tendency to run too long and had me wondering more about my shopping list than what I was actually viewing.
It is easy to see why this film hasn’t been doing well at the box office and, like other recent Wachowski brothers films, fell well short of expectations. Thankfully, it will probably win a lot of awards for its special effects. Overall I’d give this film a C.
— Jay Wolin started writing film reviews for Utah Statesman in the fall. He loves football, movies and comic. He will major in communications this spring. Send questions or comments to jacob_wolin@yahoo.com.