Review: The Wachowskis visit familiar orbits in gaudy, clunky 'Jupiter Ascending'

City Paper grade: C-

The Wachowskis' films since The Matrix have all been hobbled by jarringly bad choices, but always in service of a respectably grandiose vision. So Jupiter Ascending comes as a disappointment not just because it's often clunky and silly, but because it is by far the siblings' least ambitious undertaking. While it aims at nothing less than establishing its own universe (not to mention franchise), the film is populated with characters and stories collected from countless other sources. At its heart, Jupiter Ascending is a fairy tale about over-consumption: Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is a bored young Cinderella rescued by Channing Tatum's Caine, a gene-spliced bounty hunter who's part wolf, half-albino, formerly sported wings, currently sports eyeliner, and skates the air in a pair of gravity boots. Turns out Jupiter is the "genetic reincarnation" of the queen of one of the universe's most powerful dynastic families, which makes her the rightful owner of the Earth – a cattle planet whose human lives will eventually be harvested to extend the lives of the rich and powerful. The evil royals, led by Eddie Redmayne's alternately whispering and bellowing fop, are standard-issue space opera villains, possessing advanced technology but behaving like decadent Romans, complete with ostentatious royal weddings and zero-g orgies. The clamorous production design and outrageous costuming crowds every frame, but can't distract from the ponderous explanatory dialogue and the sad fact that the Wachowskis are too self-serious to fully indulge their obviously camp instincts.