“My mother never cleaned a toilet in her life.”
“Maybe that was her problem.”
— Exchange between the evil Balem and the heroine Jupiter Jones, who might be the evil Balem’s mother reincarnated, in the fantastically awful “Jupiter Ascending.”
Where were the Guardians of the Galaxy when we needed them? If only they had prevented the disastrous atrocity that is “Jupiter Ascending” from infiltrating Earth’s movie theaters before it was too late!
This epic, ridiculous and confounding space opera from the Wachowskis is so bad I almost want you to see it. Almost.
There’s no defending “Jupiter Ascending.” There’s no explaining “Jupiter Ascending.” There’s no way “Jupiter Ascending” isn’t making an appearance on my list of the Worst Films of 2015. This is a $175 million intergalactic train wreck sure to be invoked whenever and wherever Channing Tatum is the subject of a comedic roast.
Compared to this dreck, “Step Up” is “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Related: Chicago plays starring role in space epic ‘Jupiter Ascending’
Mila Kunis is Jupiter Jones, who has a superhero-esque origins story. (SPOILER ALERT!) In a prologue set in Russia, Jupiter’s mother, Aleksa (Maria Doyle Kennedy), is close to giving birth to Jupiter when Jupiter’s father (James D’Arcy) is murdered.
So Mama does what any grieving, nine-months-pregnant widow would do: She boards a ship for the United States and gives birth to Jupiter at sea, with the help of a bevy of stout Russian women. You’d think this was taking place in 1910, but given the timeline, it’s more like the mid-1980s. But that’s the least of our problems as we settle in with our 3-D glasses for a film that actually looks pretty spectacular at times but never, ever feels like it’s in 3-D.
Cut to present-day (or perhaps near-future) Chicago, where Jupiter, her mother and various other relations work for the family cleaning service. Every morning at 4:45, the alarm goes off and Jupiter moans “I hate my life” before she spends her days scrubbing toilets.
Ah, but like Sarah Connor in “The Terminator” and Thomas Anderson in “The Matrix,” Jupiter holds mankind’s future in her hands. She just doesn’t realize it yet.
From that point forward, I had a nagging suspicion my popcorn was laced with acid. Channing Tatum plays Caine, a genetically engineered interplanetary hunter with DNA that’s half-wolf, half-human. Caine has lupine ears, a tremendous sense of smell and super-cool boots that enable him to levitate and then zip through the air like an NHL player in the fastest-skater competition.
In the first of many, many, many battle sequences in which the score is so loud we can practically see the orchestra and thousands of rounds are fired without any of the main characters suffering serious injury, Jupiter clings to Caine as they dodge alien fire while darting around the skyscrapers of Chicago. (Some of the same buildings destroyed in “Transformers 3” and “Man of Steel” get blasted again. How many times are we gonna have to rebuild?!)
Every three scenes or so, “Jupiter Ascending” takes a breather from all the CGI action for an exposition scene, where one alien being or another explains the differences between their culture and Earthling culture, defines a term Jupiter doesn’t understand or tells Jupiter why she’s so important in the grand scheme of things.
As is the case with many a thriller set on Earth, the heads of an all-powerful corporation are the villains. There are three heirs to the Abrasax Industries dynasty: Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), who tries to befriend Jupiter because Jupiter holds the key to nearly eternal life for Kalique; Titus (Douglas Booth), a smarmy snake who talks (and behaves) as if he’s the junior bad guy in a Bond movie, and the dominant Balem (Eddie Redmayne), who wants Jupiter dead dead dead and NOW!
In one of the odder and more disastrous choices in recent memory, Redmayne speaks like an old British woman. I kid you not, he sounds like Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess on “Downton Abbey.” Only a great actor could give a performance so terrible.
The Wachowskis populate the “Jupiter Ascending” universe with dozens of thinly drawn characters who look like descendants of the bar patrons in “Star Wars.” It feels like much more attention was given to makeup and wardrobe than to actual character development. They have names such as Famulus and Sargon and Plinth and Falque and Greeghan, and if you put them in a lineup and asked me to identify them and their reason for being in the movie, I’d be lucky to bat .500. All I know is there must be a planet filled with cows somewhere near Jupiter, because nearly everyone, even creatures that look like Godzilla, wears a fabulous leather getup.
The Wachowskis pay tribute to and/or cherrypick story elements from their own “Matrix” films, “Soylent Green,” “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Men in Black,” “Brazil,” “The Wizard of Oz” and God knows what else. Every time Tatum and Kunis flew and fell and tumbled and hurtled through the skies above Chicago or somewhere in deep space, I pictured these two game actors strapped into harnesses in some green-screen studio, doing their best to sell this shiny, sparkling, awesomely horrible hot mess.
Tatum and Kunis are likable enough, but the young Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep couldn’t have prevented this bomb from exploding.
ZERO STARS
Warner Bros. presents a film written and directed by the Wachowskis. Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violence, sequences of sci-fi action, some suggestive content and partial nudity). Opens Friday at local theaters.
