City of Ember - Liked It

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Toby James, Bill Murray, Harry Treadaway
Director: Gil Kenan
Runtime: 1 hour, 30 minutes 
Based upon the book by Jeanne Duprau
Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Novel Based | 2008

I was please when I first popped in this DVD into the player to see Saoirse Ronan and Bill Murray as the two stars of the film. Saoirse is most definitely one of my favorite actresses recently, this movie is probably near the beginning of her career because it came out in 2008, before The Lovely Bones was turned into a film. City of Ember is based on a book and is ever so clearly a family film. The plot line and story were well written and interesting, as the two characters (Lina and Doon) race to save the town that is running on one generator that's about to break down and send them in complete darkness.

Even if I didn't see the little "note" in the beginning of the film that this was based on a book, I would have guessed. Am I the only one that can sometimes just see the story line unfold more like it would in a book than in a movie? I thought Bill Murray was good in his role as the Mayor and antagonist of the film. Though I'm still not 100% sure what his reasons were for not wanting Lina and Doon to discover the truth - I mean, that could only save the entire town right? The only thing I could think of was that perhaps he was just a selfish twit. 

The ending of the film was perfect and complete. And I really enjoyed that it was only 1 hour and 30 minutes run time, all of which were packed with fun and fast paced scenes. I would recommend this as a family film for sure - it has so much imagination in it, I can see how some children might enjoy this more than I did. I'll give it a "Liked It" rating. (3/5).