In space, no one can hear you yawn. The Wachowskis are back to remind us once again that they really are one-hit wonders as their ambitious and expensive sci-fi epic is this year’s John Carter, in which bored actors shoot lasers at each other amidst sets and pieces that are poor copies of those from better, more innovative movies.

Jupiter Ascending is a movie that is full of action, explosions, political bickering and Channing Tatum looking extremely awkward as he skates through the sky in anti-gravity boots--and yet still manages to be extremely boring.

Maybe it’s that Tatum and Mila Kunis have absolutely no chemistry together, and Kunis especially seems to have realized early on that she was cast in a movie that makes The Phantom Menace look like The Empire Strikes Back. Or that villain and Oscar hopeful Eddie Redmayne hams it up for no apparent reason other than why the fuck not? Or that some of the henchmen remind me of something from the ill-fated Super Mario Bros. movie?

Nope. Those aren’t why. It’s because despite their apparent best efforts, the Wachowskis took a dreadful screenplay, layered upon it a bunch of sci-fi cliches, and then, the biggest sin of all, failed to put together even a single memorable action sequence.

To put more bluntly: the two minds behind The Matrix, a film full of build-up, suspense and downright awesome action, have delivered something quintessentially generic.

While the visual effects are solid--if you don’t mind the same CGI world-building that has become rote over the last 15 years--, the effects invovling Tatum’s anti-gravity boots just look cheesy. Unfortunately, much of the action revolves him flying around cities and saving Kunis from impending death, which is the only thing she really does in the movie. Most of the action is just chaotic; if there is good fight choreography at play, you can’t see it, and a scene in which Tatum and a sad-looking Sean Bean attempt to fly to a spaceship protected by “hammers” is just a blur of color and noise.

Couple the lackluster action with a repetitive, dull story where Kunis is dragged wide-eyed from one similar situation to the next, Jupiter Ascending just doesn’t have a lot to offer. The character names and terminology are often confusing, and even the Wachowskis seem confused as to what kind of movie they want to make. One of the best sequences is a comedic one where Kunis attempts to cut through a bunch of bureaucratic red tape at some kind of weird, space age processing center reminiscent of something from The Fifth Element, but everything from the tone of the sequence to the actual set pieces and characters within are out of sync with the rest of the movie.

There are far worse movies than Jupiter Ascending, but given the budget, the director pedigree and the [misplaced] ambitiousness of the production, it’s fair to expect at least an exciting dumb movie. But instead, somehow, the movie is a yawner, and in space, yawning can kill you.

But hey, at least my mom liked it.

Review by Erik Samdahl.