City of Ember Smolders

Kids should enjoy the “rousing and action-packed and short” City of Ember, so long as they "haven't already been hopelessly corrupted by high-powered sci-fi on TV and video,” Roger Ebert writes for the Chicago Sun-Times. But for adults the movie may prove too nonsensical, and, for other critics, too dull. “I've had more fun trying to assemble an Ikea wardrobe,” writes Chris Tookey in the Daily Mail.

The problem is what Tookey calls the “extraordinarily boring story,” which fails to create interesting characters or “give them sufficiently knotty problems to solve.” Most critics agree that it looks great: "The movie's production design is the real star," writes Ty Burr in the Boston Globe, outshining "the heavy-breathing plot and distressed ambience." (More movie review stories.)