DVD review (region 1 & 2)
Directed by Robert Shaye
Starring Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton, Rainn Wilson, Kathryn Hahn
Release date Out now

Siblings Noah and Emma discover a box on the beach containing magical objects. The toys, which include a rabbit called Mimzy, give the children special powers and hold the key to saving the future of mankind…

Adapted from Lewis Padgett’s 1943 short story, Mimsy Were the Borrowgroves, and aiming to be E.T. for a new generation, The Last Mimzy’s new age philosophising is undercut by its corporate sheen and blatant product placing. It feels like the work of old hippies peddling the ideals of their heyday in search of the big dollar.

The film suffers from over-simplifying its source ideas to the point where it barely hangs together, while still remaining too complex and wooly to effectively communicate the children’s fable it hopes to provide.

Its message seems to be that we have become so isolated by technology that it is polluting our very DNA. This has disastrous consequences for the future where mankind has lost all sense of human feeling, war is rife, the planet is dying and individuals go around in weird, alien outfits because they can no longer stand the sight of each other.

It boils down to the trite observation that we should all love one another and everything will be okay, a point hammered home by the inclusion of a horrible Roger Waters song, Hello (I Love You), especially written for the film and filled with rehashed Pink Floyd imagery.

The Last Mimzy is full of references to various kinds of mysticism: telepathy, Buddhist mandalas (maps of the universe), palm reading, physic ability and teleportation. But when Noah (O’Neil), empowered by one of the gadgets in the box, manages to teleport an object it inevitably turns out to be a can of Sprite. Later on it transpires that Mimzy the magic rabbit is actually a product of Intel. This revelation rather contradicts the film’s anti-technology theme. It seems the corporations will save us after all.

Overall the film comes across as confused. There’s a strange tie-in to Alice in Wonderland, but it lacks the invention and kills any sense of anarchy with its heavy moralising. It wants to provoke the wonder of E.T. but gets bogged down with plot convolutions and, besides, an inanimate, stuffed rabbit murmuring gibberish does not achieve the empathy of a lost and lonely pygmy alien.

In its confusion The Last Mimzy is reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. But whereas that film, while appearing to make little sense, was at least interesting in its ambition, this feels like a compromised vision; a case of a lot of ideas amounting to not much at all.

DVD extras include a selection of behind the scenes features, deleted scenes, director’s commentary and interactive games. Joe Green

VERDICT: 4/10
It had the potential to be interesting and thought provoking but The Last Mimzy’s lack of coherence and emotional centre renders it a forgettable mess.