Since I’ve started this site, I’ve written a lot of reviews. In case you missed some of my earlier ones, I would like to share an older review of “Jupiter Ascending” which originally appeared here.
Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) was born under signs that predicted future greatness, but her reality as a woman consists of cleaning other people’s houses and endless bad breaks. Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter, arrives on Earth to locate her, making Jupiter finally aware of the great destiny that awaits her: Jupiter’s genetic signature marks her as the next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.
The reason why I skipped the film the first time was because I thought the trailers made it look silly. After finally watching the film, my suspicions were right but I digress. For those who haven’t seen the film yet, a woman named Jupiter Jones’s (Kunis) life begins to change once a genetically engineered hunter named Caine (Tatum) finds her and informs her of her destiny, she is next in line for an extraordinary inheritance which could alter the fate of the universe. I found that the beginning of the film was when the silliness began. If you haven’t already figured it out, this is a sci-fi film. For me this type of film could go either way and of course, it went the wrong way. I just couldn’t find an explanation for a lot of the things I was seeing. Another side of this that it uses its own genre as an excuse for convenient plot devices. This isn’t really a complaint as most films do it but I though it happened a lot more here. For a film to be good, not necessarily great, it has to have interesting characters and a good story (its not like I really had to tell you that). Unfortunately this film had neither of those. I just found it hard to care about anything here. This film is full of one-dimensional characters who just made it hard for me to care about them. Part of this is because of the story which did not explain much so I did not quite understand what was happening until past halfway which was a little too late for my liking as the story did not make too much sense to me until then. When I did learn the truth, it was just silly. What didn’t help was the acting which I found a combination of okay, cheesy, and some overacting. Let’s start with okay, I thought Sean Bean in a supporting role was okay. I guess primarily because he didn’t die (which doesn’t happen often for him). Kunis and Tatum were both cheesy. What also didn’t work was that their characters were supposed to be romantically linked (predictable) and it just wasn’t believable since they had no chemistry. Eddie Redmayne as the film’s main villain, Balem Abrasax, seemed to be overacting which was distracting in the wrong way. What was amazing to me about this was that he was overacting while his character seemed to be whispering the whole time. I just couldn’t help but to get the impression that not only them but all of the actors just didn’t care and this was infectious. Sure the special effects were okay but you don’t really care at this point. Overall, I found this concept had promise but it was wasted on a bad story and bad characters.
Score: 5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
