The Last Mimzy (PG):B- Extras:B+

"The Last Mimzy" offers a good-hearted pastiche of sights and sounds but fails to trigger substantial visual or emotional resonance. Loosely adapted from the 1943 short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett, itself a reference to Lewis Carroll's majestic nonsense poem "Jabberwocky," the modern "Mimzy" centers on the attempts of Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil) and Emma Wilder (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) to save humanity. \n"Mimzy" opens in the far future, after humankind has successfully prevailed over an unspecified environmental and spiritual disaster. New Earth abounds with wildflowers, looks somewhat like a Swiss cough drop commercial and is populated by refined schoolchildren. Their yogi recounts the story of a master scientist who saved the planet by dispatching Mimzys, toy-rabbits-cum-guiding-emissaries, through wormholes to contact altruistic kinder from Earth's past. \nThe last and final Mimzy, along with its accoutrements of strange rocks and opaline prisms, comes into the possession of Noah and Emma. Soon after, the children develop superhuman intelligence: Noah the ability to speak to bugs and scribble Tibetan mandalas ex nihilo, Emma the more global gifts of heightened intuition and compassion. \nTo a lesser degree, "The Last Mimzy" also grapples, albeit superficially, with the relational dilemmas of David (Timothy Hutton) and Jo (Joely Richardson), the children's parents. Much of this domestic intrigue was cut during editing, but the remnants are available among the DVD extras, along with some benevolent computer games and interesting featurettes on mandalas, quantum mechanics and nanotechnology.\nNevertheless, purists should be cautioned against the movie's promiscuous use of distorted camera angles, at once panoramic and claustrophobic, and its subtle patriarchy (Emma whimpers and plots, while her brother builds a bridge to the future -- "Wonderland" or "Narnia" this movie is not). And while "The Last Mimzy" has a number of poignant moments, it is simply too sanitized to merit higher marks.