“City of Ember”

I caught this little gem on one of the cable channels awhile ago.

Produced by Tom Hanks and starring Bill Murray , Tim Robbins and Martin Landau, “City of Ember” (2008) is about an underground “city” built by scientists to ensure the survival of mankind following an end of civilization type disaster. Instructions for how and when to leave the city were lost, leaving Ember’s engineers struggling to keep the city’s decrepit power plant from collapsing and the ‘government’ to deal with dwindling food supplies.

While rated PG, it’s just quirky enough to be enjoyed by adults.

After watching Hollywood’s tired portrayal of the white-male-corporate-system and it’s desecration of the magnificent rainforests of Pandora, and the blatant rip-off off that same theme in the finale of ’Terra Nova’, I found it refreshing to see a negative commentary of a centrally planned economy even though there probably wasn’t much room for capitalism in Ember.

Occupations were assigned by drawing a name out of a hat. No consideration was given to the aptitude of the graduates. The food supply was rationed by the government, purchased with currency. Needless to say, corruption like the type we saw in the former Soviet Union was seen again in the hoarding of food by the mayor (Murray) and his cronies. Landau did a fine job of portraying the stereotypical union mentality.

Ember was given very little promotion and was quietly released on DVD. It was obviously beaten into submission by the vast leftwing liberal media conspiracy…