Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski
Starring: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth
Three stars
What a strange film Jupiter Ascending is. The new movie from Lana and Andy Wachowski is their first original sci-fi since The Matrix trilogy that made their names over a decade ago. It's also every bit as barmy and baffling as their last effort, 2012's ambitious David Mitchell adaptation Cloud Atlas. While that had Hugh Grant as a cannibal chieftain, this has Channing Tatum as a soldier with just a splash of wolf DNA and Mila Kunis as an intergalactic queen/janitor. Say what you want, but the Wachowskis can never be accused of typecasting.
The story, inspired by a mishmash of influences from The Wizard of Oz and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, begins in Chicago, where Kunis's Russian immigrant Jupiter Jones lives with her large family and cleans toilets for a living. "I was born without a home, without a country, without a father," she says, in the opening voice-over, explaining how she's always felt like an illegal alien. Unbeknownst to her, though, Jupiter happens to be the reincarnation of Seraphi, an all-powerful extraterrestrial matriarch.
Seraphi’s demise after almost 100,000 years has left her three children – the eldest Balem (Eddie Redmayne), his sister Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) and their youngest sibling Titus (Douglas Booth) – squabbling over her vast estate, which just happens to include Earth. Enter Tatum’s part-lupine “tracker”, Caine Wise, who has been hired by Titus to locate Jupiter in the hope they can verify if she really is this regal descendant.
It's this political power struggle that forms the heart of Jupiter Ascending, with the unhinged, ruthless Balem with the most to lose. Redmayne, who has rightly been gaining huge plaudits for his work as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, is ludicrously over-the-top here. A true pantomime villain, his dialogue readings veer wildly, as he chews over lines such as: "Time is the single- most precious commodity in the universe."
Yet what can you expect from a film with talking reptiles and more camp costumes than a Village People concert? Somehow, Kunis and Tatum manage to get through their scenes without laughing – and credit to both for fully buying into the Wachowskis’ whacked-out world. Admittedly, Kunis does spend a lot of the film in her co-star’s muscular arms – enough to pacify anyone, you’d think – as Caine tries to protect Jupiter from various alien bounty hunters.
Like a direct relation to The Matrix's Neo, who similarly has his eyes opened to a much wider world, Jupiter is understandably freaked by her new-found status as an interplanetary leader. And it only gets weirder. Like the scene where Caine takes her to meet Stinger (Sean Bean), a soldier pal who has been spliced with the DNA of bees. Floating around his rural hideout, the bees recognise a queen when they see one – and are soon buzzing around Jupiter.
It's odd moments such as these that keep you watching, although the Wachowskis also still have an eye for the spectacular – notably a breathtaking aerial chase scene with Caine using his jet-powered boots to surf the sky. Seen in 3-D, the visual effects are hallucinatory at times though it's never quite as cool and unique as The Matrix proved to be. Too often, the film feels like a smash-and-grab of other sci-fi films, splicing itself with their DNA.
Typical of this is a pointed nod to Brazil, with a cameo by Gilliam as a monocle-wearing clerk in a sequence where Jupiter must wade through out-of-this-world bureaucracy to register her status as queen. Heartening to know that even advanced alien societies still suffer from red tape, it's one of the film's more amusing moments. More often than not, however you'll be laughing at Jupiter Ascending, not with it.
• Jupiter Ascending is out in cinemas today
artslife@thenational.ae
