Jupiter Ascending

While I'm on a bad movie roll, I might as well talk about one that I actually quite enjoyed, Jupiter Ascending.  Though it is definitely a hot mess of a film, this big silly space opera worked for me, so it's an interesting contrast to the other two bad flicks (Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight) that I've discussed recently. 

The structure of Jupiter Ascending is a silly plot with so many flaws you'll either have to ignore them or spend all your time pointing them out.  The heroine has power over bees because, hey, why not?  She uses the power only once, of course, because it happens to be convenient.  The daughter of the local sheriff appears, runs out for groceries, and never appears again.  Whatever.  I could go on and on.  You don't go to this one for story.

The acting is also not the reason to see it.  The two leads, Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, are cardboard stand-ups, generic inserts in the hunky male and lips-and-eyes young actress categories respectively.  The villains are more amusing, if only because they go so far over the top as to almost take flight.  Particularly memorable is Eddie Redmayne, who manages in one twelve month period to deliver both an Oscar-nominated performance (The Theory of Everything) and this appalling exercise in awfulness, in which he lisps and staggers and swishes his way to the most excessive performance of the young 2015.

The reason to see this movie--and what elevates it above its bad-movie kin--is its look, the unusual vision of the Wachowskis.  Spaceships with the strange grandeur of Victorian clockworks, floating cities of similar construction, space docks with giant chandeliers--the look of the movie will carry you through it and keep you interested--well, it kept me interested.

As long as you understand that you're in this one for the visuals, I recommend Jupiter Ascending.  If you want a genuinely good movie, however, give it a pass.