By Anna Power @TLE_Film Editor @KittPower
“I have more in common with a dog than I do with you” Caine (Channing Tatum or should it be Canine?)
The blunder bus has arrived. There were EU food mountains less criminally wasteful than the Wachowski’s latest film, a lavish effrontery to the sci-fi genre and filmmaking in general. Epic both in length and the endurance it takes to sit through it, it’s a crushing disappointment from The Matrix team. Visually magnificent, the film is crafted with such filigree detailed perfection, that it is as scintillating to the eye as it is to the mind and spirit and what a spectacular betrayal to render it worthless due to a crassly written script, appalling cringe-worthy nonsense dialogue and the kind of clunky hammy acting indicative of actors who don’t believe the crap they’re saying either.
The only way to save Jupiter Ascending would be to remove the sound and re-market it as a silent film hiring a decent writer to create a narrative around the pretty pictures but even then there’d be no escaping Channing Tatum’s Caine gliding through the universe like a bearded beefcake Tarzan with the doe-eyed helpless Jupiter (Mila Kunis) hanging off him, straddling whatever part of him she can get her leg around, not to mention Eddie Redmayne doing his almost entertaining Emperor Ming ventriloquist impression from Flash Gordon.
I’m not sure of the exact point when a film is so bad that it becomes good but Jupiter Ascending doesn’t make it. Utter dross.