The Last Mimzy doesn't pander needlessly to its core audience, but at the same time it also has a good accomplishment in that it also has an appeal to adults, or at least those that have passed that age of adolescence and look back on childhood with levels of nostalgia and relief that it's over. It delights as well as gives special meaning to putting a level of belief in what is unknown at a time when the rest of the world relies on hard facts and rigid control of personality. It also puts ET to a certain test: can the little creature from another world that needs to get home kind of story hold up to quasi (actually precise) psychedelia? Pink Floyd shirts and Roger Waters aside, this may even have a secret appeal to stoners just as much as your little boy or girl at the movie theater, who will obviously see it in a different life, that of light, efficient irreverence and lots of neat special effects.
'Mimzy' tells the story of a boy and a girl, Noah and Emma, both at least under the age of 10 but old enough to be articulate enough as well as appropriately secretive in the fantasy they hold paramount, who come upon a strange rock from the ocean. In it lies a bunch of fragments, and, oddly enough, a stuffed, fluffy, cute bunny named Mimzy, who Emma takes as her most important possession. Noah meanwhile becomes transfixed with the new powers that soon come to him via these rocks: he can hear the smallest insect, and is transfixed by obscure designs. This strikes up the attention of his parents as well as his science teacher (Rainn Wilson), who also knows of the symbols Noah makes up. But after a power outage- it also happens to be a generator that Noah conjures- gets the attention of the government, not sure what exactly is going on. Emma has a problem, however, in that Mimzy, her closest confidant and "teacher" is dying and needs to get back home. That's the basic story, anyway, as there are little ins and outs as the story goes on, including a great product placement for Sprite, and a montage-free example of each child's new abilities.
Some of this may be a little preposterous, even goofy, but Bob Shaye and his team bypass the obvious but still perilous pit-falls for filmmakers investing themselves into children's movies. No truly stupid gags, nothing with bodily excretions, none of that really, and if anything the humor, of a little wild and over-the-top in variety (some of which I was laughing at alone while the other kids were silent), is innocent and sort of knowing of the split of imagination between children and adults. The two kids are also very good at playing their parts, with Wryn as Emma very adept at being vulnerable and smart, and O'Neil being almost too close to looking like the boy Elliot in ET, however not without his own strengths. Shaye sometimes lets his control slip in just simple things like cinematography or making a fitting enough ending (too many futuristic hippies me thinks), and the goofiness does teeter on becoming a little too much. But I responded more to how the power of taking a long repeated idea, of kids becoming changed by outside forces in a very real world, and there being a sort of little twist to it all. It's not just about making friends and gaining in some alien intelligence, but in figuring the significance of the future, however weird it might be. It's definitely the finest children's movie, non-animated, to come out so far in 2007. 7.5/10
