Joss Whedon's “SERENITY”

Review by Dennis McDonald

A fun movie. The elements are familiar: Han Solo-style wisecracking captain-with-a-heart-of-gold, rag-tag crew, gorgeous babe good at swordplay and kick-boxing, evil empire, space armadas battling at close quarters, and — I kid you not — flesh-eating outer space zombies. These are all assembled in a competent and imaginatively visualized package that, even when it strains credulity, entertains.

My only complaint: there’s no sense of wonder here. The story line appears to be a well crafted assemblage of ideas and themes pulled together from movie and TV science fiction. There’s no real attempt at a deeper reality that good written science fiction can accomplish. What we have is a competent product that adheres to the Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica formula of chases, romantic sub-plots, soap opera, and political intrigue.

But it’s fun and well produced with great visual and sound effects. I just hope that folks introduced to science fiction via products such as Serenity realize there’s a lot more to the genre and that they follow up with some reading of authors like Vinge, Stephenson, and Clarke.

Movie review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald