Jupiter Ascending ***½ (2015, Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean, Douglas Booth) – Movie Review

Mila Kunis enjoys the main role as Jupiter Jones, a Russian immigrant in Chicago, apparently destined in the stars for great things but actually currently with a job cleaning toilets.

Life suddenly gets much worse and much better – certainly more exciting – when the universe’s number one psycho (Eddie Redmayne camping in up for Britain) targets her for death, only to be saved (for the first of a zillion times in the movie) by part-wolf, part-man pointy-eared beefcake Caine, a genetically engineered ex-military hired hunter.

Caine is played, actually downplayed, effectively by Channing Tatum, who obliges, as always, by taking his shirt off for long stretches of the movie so we can admire him. It must be in his contract! Tatum swings top billing in his contract, too, though he is just heroine’s sidekick, always there at her side to defend her, apparently just like Toto is there for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the film-makers tell us.

If I ever get into trouble with any of the universe’s psychos, I’m just praying that Tatum will always be around to save me. Kunis should be so lucky! Ah, yes, it’s only a fairy tale! And I’d like a pair of Tatum’s anti-gravity boots for Christmas please, if anyone is listening.

Anyway, it turns out that Jupiter is a right royal, people keep calling her ‘your majesty’ and – that her genetic signature has marked her as next in line for an inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos. She is the genetic reincarnation of the Queen of the Universe, with infinite wealth and an immunity to bees! Something like that, anyway. No wonder she’s in trouble.

Apart from Balem, Douglas Booth‘s Titus (not quite as camp as Redmayne, but camp enough) is up to no good either, and wants to marry her. And Tuppence Middleton‘s Kalique Abrasax is an ancient mum, who keeps rejuvenating herself, thank goodness. Sean Bean‘s craggy warrior Stinger starts by punching Tatum out, but it’s friendly fighting, and old Beany’s on Tatum’s and Jupiter’s side. There’s also a cameo role for Terry Gilliam as a potty old scientist, or somebody like that.

‘We wanted to make something original, not cynical,’ say  The Wachowskis. Well, they’ve achieved the second bit, but not really the first, Their movie, quirky though it is, seems very derivative of Star Wars, Dune, Flash Gordon, Barbarella and Brazil, just to mention a few, not to mention their own work, The Matrix, Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas.

If the result is a mess, just as it sounds like it is, it’s a likeable mess, an enjoyable, fast-moving, eye-catching one. The plot is impossible to follow, and there’s no point anyway. Go with the flow. Enjoy the sweet double act of Tatum and Kunis (what a cute couple they make), the flying dinosaurs, the fetish-mask robots, the CGI, the 3D, the IMAX screen. It’s a spectacle. It’s a lark. It’s creates its own childhood marvel world. It’s fun. It’s not a great movie, not a classic, but, yes, it really is fun.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/