CITY OF EMBER

"We must leave Ember..."

For more two hundred years the people of the City of Ember had lived underground relying on the great generator to supply them with power and water. Over the last few years however, there had been weekly blackouts and each one was getting longer every time the darkness came. For youngsters Doon (Treadaway) and Lina (Ronan), this was becoming more and more worrying but it was against the law for anyone to find a way out of the city. When Lina discovers a box containing some instruction from the original builders of Ember, the pair decides to investigate but the City's Mayor (Murray) has his own secret to hide and wants to stop them at any cost.

When it comes to adapting family friendly, children novels Walden Media have become the standard but can they keep up their excellent record with 'City of Ember'?

With hits like 'Bridge to Terebithia', 'Holes', 'Charlotte's Web', 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D' and 'The Chronicles of Narnia' series, families now know were to turn when they want to watch a live action movie that everyone can enjoy. For all their hits however, there have been a few failures as well. Films like 'The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising', 'How to Eat Fried Worms', 'Nim's Island', 'Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium' and 'Around the World in 80 Days' hardly set the box office alight, so which category would 'City of Ember' fall in?

Based on the novel by Jeanne Duprau, 'City of Ember' is the story of last surviving human city. Two hundred years after the Third World War, Ember is an underground metropolis, powered a huge generator, that provides electricity, clean air and running water. That generator is starting to fail however and blackouts are becoming more and more common and lasting longer and longer. The City's mayor says there is no need for panic and everything is in hand but youngsters Doon and Lina think that the generator is about to fail, so it is up to them to find the proof and if the builders left them with instructions of what to do next. This, of course, is a fantastic set up for family entertainment but unfortunately the execution isn't as good as it could have been.

For the first three quarters of the movie, 'City of Ember' does a great job of introducing the characters and setting up a premise that should lead to a great, adventure filled finale. Here we see the establishment of Ember, seeing it social make up, how jobs are issued in the city, revealing the political structure and seeing how the people have survived underground for two hundred years. We also invest time in Doon and Lina, their relationships and families, discovering much about their past and hoping that the two will discover what the Builders had left for the population of Ember. It is when they do discover what they need to do however, is when the movie falls down. It is simply over far too quickly, making you think that this should have been a much longer movie because just as the adventure gets going, the movie ends.

The cast make the establishment of Ember much more watchable than it could have been. Director Gil Kenan and his creative team have gathered together an all-star cast to bring the story to life. There are good, if a little limited, performances from Tim Robbins, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Martin Landau and a villainous role for Bill Murray is also very welcome. It is the performances of Harry Treadaway and Saoirse Ronan as Doon and Lina that make the movie much more watchable than it could have been.

'City of Ember' is an average family film that suffers from feeling like it should have been a much longer film. Just as the adventure starts, the film ends which is a real disappoint as the audience is left thinking 'what happened next?'

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2008