‘Jupiter Ascending’ too silly to take seriously, but still not fun

“Jupiter Ascending” is a very flashy movie but it’s a flash in a very shallow pan. Sure, it’s got lots of bright colors, loud explosions, fanciful, imaginary creatures, elaborate fantasy worlds, and futuristic gizmos like anti-gravity boots and invisibility shields.

But all these distractions can’t hide the fact it has a far too convoluted storyline and almost no compelling characters. (Piece of advice for “Jupiter Ascending,” which clocks in at well over two hours: firework celebrations usually clock in at 20 minutes for a reason.)

This blockbluster-y sci-fi film is the latest ambitious effort by the Wachowski siblings who gave us the memorable Matrix trilogy and not much else of consequence.

With “Jupiter Ascending,” the Wachowskis clearly were given a blank check to bring to the screen whatever their imaginations could possibly conceive.

What they came up with was a fantastical universe in which Planet Earth is a minor but valuable cog in the cosmos, a cog that is being battled over by three nasty siblings who live in a galaxy far, far away.

Thanks to an unexplained quirk in this universe, a young Russian immigrant to America, named Jupiter, has the identical genetic make-up of the long-dead mother of those three nasty siblings. The two brothers and one sister then do battle with each other over who has claims over her re-incarnation – not because they love her – but because they can use her as a pawn in their deadly struggles for dominance over each other. It turns out they all want her dead, but on their own favorable terms.

Mila Kunis plays this reincarnated damsel-in-distress and Channing Tatum plays her kidnapper-turned-savior,
as the two of them jump from one close call to another, fighting all manner of alien creatures in the employ of the various siblings. There are so many cliffhangers, mostly involving Tatum rescuing Kunis, it gets monotonous.

Derring-do when done to death is deadly dull.

Not to mention, the fledgling romance between the two of them is downright clumsy.

And poor Eddie Redmayne. He’s the Oscar frontrunner for his performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” In “Jupiter Ascending,” he plays the most villainous and petulant of the siblings and does so in such a ridiculously high-camp fashion, I wonder if it could cost him Oscar votes this month. (Eddie Murphy in “Norbit,” anyone?)

Ultimately, “Jupiter Ascending” is too silly to take seriously, and not silly enough to be much fun.