Bill Murray + post-apocalyptic underground city running on fumes and reverting into the chaos of darkness + “Dark City” in the literal and figurative sense = win. A big old fat win in my book. A win for me (who loves apocalypse stories as much if not more than than science fiction), a win for you (did I mention: Bill Murray!), and a win for the target audience of this picture: kids (adapted from a popular children’s novel and 100x more thoughtful and lively than that time Spiderwick held up a Golden Compass for Prince Caspian). A win for all those reasons and one final, monumental one: how many post-apocalyptic kids films have ever been made and have ever been made well?

Looking at “Ember’s” less than golden box office numbers is where the win runs out however. Pay no mind, though, for “City of Ember” should go down as that super cool cult-ish sort of curio of a film where an engorged Bill Murray, as the mayor of Ember, a lived-in subterranean city from our doomed future (I loved how dust billows from every surface touched), hides caches of food, placates his dim denizens and tries to stop a pair of kids (a slightly more grown up Saoirse Ronan from “Atonement”…  hey, more win!!!) from waking up from their dismal reality to find a way out of the darkness and a way in to the “myth” that is natural light/life from our once fallen world. The decay of this city most definitely mirrors the decay of our humanity. Which reminds me, I consider it a win-bonus that film doesn’t push such heavy handed allegoric or symbolic cheese on us (ex. decay or darkness metaphors) because such things have a way of being able to speaks for themselves and exist inherently in the story rather than in the execution.

This brings me to my final point. Unlike most overrated children fantasy films of today and unlike just about all in the realm of sci-fi, this film does not fall back on CGI trickery or speed freak pacing to tell its story. Rather, it relies on STORY to tell its story. In addition, and as one last point, I have to say that the film contains the vibe of “THX 1138″ by way of Alex Proyas modern classic “Dark City” with a pinch of “Wall-E” and a healthy dosage of Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” in the sense that this is a story about overcoming the roles and burden society places upon the individual.

grade: B+