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Two weekends back, WL and I went for a movie at the Mid Valley. We had a couple of free movie tickets courtesy of lkclee which were expiring July 1st. For want of a better choice (all the other good shows were sold out), we caught a show entitled The Last Mimzy.

Synopsis
The movie is based on Mimzy Were The Borogoves, a Sci-Fi short story by Lewis Padgett. The future is dying of pollutants. A great scientist sends back Mimzys, mysterious boxes containing nondescript toys, to collect a pure sample that is able to save future.

The movie tells the story of two siblings, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) and Noah (Chris O’Neil) who discover one such package from the future during a family vacation. It is the last Mimzy, the last hope of the future. Within the box are some strange devices that look like toys. The most important toy is Mimzy, a stuffed toy rabbit with a Naruto lookalike belly button and the last hope for the future. As they play with the ‘toys’, the children start displaying higher levels of intelligence and display some X-Men like superpowers (such as telepathy and speaking to bugs).

Noah’s school teacher, who has an obsession about Mandalas, sees one of Noah’s doodles. After some research, he and his life partner discovers it to be an exact match of some centuries old Tibetan Mandala. In the meantime, a statewide blackout caused by one of the ‘toys’ leads the FBI into the picture. Concerned about terrorists and national security, the FBI take the family into custody.

Towards the end, the children learn of the purpose of Mimzy and how it is meant to save the future. Escaping from the FBI, the children find a way to send Mimzy home. They are helped by Noah’s science teacher and his zen inclined life partner. With a Emma’s unpolluted teardrop caught in its belly button, Mimzy is finally sent back to the future and the future is saved. The end.

My Say
We saw the trailer for the movie when we were watching Pirate of the Caribbean. It seemed pretty good at the time. I forgot about the movie until we were desperately searching for a good movie to use the free tickets on. That’s when WL suggested The Last Mimzy. When trying to reserve seats at Cinema Online, I came across and read an unfavourable review. Knowing how tastes differ, we went into the cineplex with an open mind.

The Last Mimzy - Movie Trailer

Reading my synopsis above, I’m sure you can tell how disjointed the movie is. Sadly, I have to agree with the review by Z.Y. Lee of Cinema Online. Although the movie is only 98 minutes long, I was fidgety throughout the show and my butt hurt from sitting down too long. While there were some funny moments, the movie wasn’t good enough to hold my attention. There wasn’t enough of a plot to hold the movie together for 98 minutes. Like the Sci-Fi short story it is based upon, they should have made this into a short movie with maybe 45 minutes of airtime.

The acting is bad and exaggerated. The sound effects splicing is worse! During special effects scenes, the voices of the actors feels disembodied and sounds as though they are coming from a faraway place.

One scene in the movie shows the children in custody of the authorities and they put a piece of Mimzy under an electron microscope. As they zoom in deeper, one of the lab staff tells the lead that they are reaching the limit of the scope. The the scene cuts to a meeting room where an expert from Intel gives a cockbull story about how Intel has been experimenting with nanotechnology but nothing that was as advanced as Mimzy. On screen is an image of Intel logo on a supposedly nanotech chip from Mimzy. Talk about marketing. Grazer says he’ll watch the movie just for this scene. Funny…

Anyway, it’s a good thing that the movie tickets were free. I would have banged my head against a wall had I paid good money for the movie. I don’t recommend it to anyone. Watch it only if you’re like us, with free tickets to spare and desperate to utilise them. Otherwise, give this movie a miss.