Keep driving past ‘City of Ember’

Gloomy kids’ adventure will disturb children, bore adults

Alonso Duralde Film critic

It’s turning out to be quite the year for post-apocalyptic kids’ movies — this summer we had “Wall-E,” with its polluted Earth abandoned by an increasingly flabby human race, and now comes “City of Ember,” about a pocket of civilization that’s been living underground for 200 years after an unspecified catastrophe (or what Peter Greenaway in “The Falls” would call a “Violent Unknown Event”).

Would that this new movie had a tenth of the charm or the smarts of the Disney/Pixar cartoon. All “City of Ember” offers are uninteresting characters in a grimy and bleak world — the production design all but screams “It’s a set!” — and instead of suspense or even empathy, there’s just noise and ugliness.

The film begins with scientists loading up a box with instructions on how to leave the underground city and return to the surface world two centuries hence. The box is supposed to be passed down from mayor to mayor, but it winds up buried in a closet until it’s discovered by Lina (Saoirse Ronan). Perfect timing, too, because Lina and her best friend Doon (Harry Treadaway) have noticed that Ember is falling apart, with more frequent blackouts due to the city’s failing generator.