There are movies that will put you to sleep, and there are ones that will leave you with a headache on either side. Jupiter Ascending manages both with such elan that you develop grudging respect for The Wachowskis for having managed to convince the studios to release this film on such a large scale. That is, assuming most of the production team managed to stay awake through the film. But one may never know.
There’s very little that you can do when a less-wide-eyed-than-usual Mila Kunis goes from toilet cleaner to owner of Planet Earth. If you’re trying to make sense of that, here’s fair warning: watching this film will not help. Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, whose one secret ambition is to buy a brass telescope and stare at the stars - a trait that she appears to have inherited from her dead father, despite the fact that he was murdered when she was still a foetus. As she goes about her plunger-and-toiler brush existence, in comes Channing Tatum. An ex-military hunter who’s half-lycan, half-something else, Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) descends to earth to procure Jupiter and whisk her off to an alien ship in the middle of nowhere.
Jupiter is in demand because her genetic make-up is the same as the person who once held the deed to the planet Earth — the now deceased mater of the Abrasax family. And her kids — Titus, Kalique and Balem — need Jupiter so that they can harvest all the people on earth to make a ‘Revive’ drink that keeps these alien types young and nippy. Incidentally, that’s their family business and all three siblings want a crack at farming our earthly hides. So obviously, they hire a bounty hunter like Wise. Obviously, he falls for the girl. Obviously, he goes through intergalactic warfare and an over-sized talking lizard. Understandably, as Rod Stewart rasped, it’s All For Love.
Kunis is cute for the most part, but even she can’t pull off the whole Lara Croft routine they put her through in the end - fighting, climbing, swinging off poles and just about surviving a crumbling alien colony in outer space. And what of our dashing hero? He doesn’t do too badly. All he does is take every single move he learnt in the Step Up movies and repeat them here, when he’s fly-skating across the sky. Easy peasy.
Creating a parallel universe to tell a simple love story is all right. Loading it with so many species that you nod off and wake up wondering if you’re in an extended cut of a Star Wars film, is not all right. Far from it. The twists, turns and slightly annoying mommy issues that the Abraxas family has grate on your sensibilities— and can substantially enhance your migraine.
Verdict: Perhaps they should go back to The Matrix films and think about the good old days, release ‘Best Of...’ DVDs and so on