Film Review: Jupiter Ascending

A Jupiter-sized mess (and Jupiter is big).

Channing Tatum "surfing" around shooting and being shot at.
Channing Tatum “surfing” around shooting and being shot at.

There’s a line in Jupiter Ascending where a former alien soldier stationed on Earth tells a newly-discovered woman of royalty, “Bees don’t lie.”  With or without context, you should get a sense of how ridiculous this sounds, because it is.  Completely.  Ridiculous.  Jupiter Ascending, from the Wachowskis, whose credibility is descending rapidly, is a silly overwrought mess.  Too much is packed into too complex a premise.  The tone shifts back and forth between silly and serious, imaginative and derivative, from The Fifth Element to Dune (minus the intelligence).  When a movie gets pushed from a summer tentpole position (May-July) to the cinema graveyard shift (January-February), it’s obvious that something is wrong.  In the case of Jupiter Ascending, it has all the makings of a sci fi summer blockbuster, but fails to execute on all fronts aside from some nifty special effects that look quite pretty.

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