The Last Mimzy

Did You Know?

• The soundtrack was composed by Howard Shore, with a song by former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters titled 'Hello (I Love You)'.
• A retitled repackaging of the collection The Best of Henry Kuttner was released as The Last Mimzy: Stories to tie in with the film.

Plot

In the distant future, a scientist attempts to avert an ecological catastrophe by sending high-tech devices disguised as toys back to the 21st century. The devices land in Seattle and are found by siblings Noah Wilder and his younger sister Emma. One of the toys, a stuffed rabbit, becomes telepathically linked to Emma, who names it Mimzy. Through this connection, Emma gains advanced knowledge and psionic abilities, while Noah develops powers including teleportation and control over spiders using a card-like device and a conch shell. Emma becomes the only one able to use floating stones called spinners that generate a force field. She calls herself 'the chosen one' and Noah 'the engineer,' essential for building a bridge to the future. Their parents and Noah's science teacher Larry White discover the devices and the children's powers. Noah accidentally causes a power outage across half of Washington state, drawing FBI attention. Agent Nathaniel Broadman interrogates the family, and Mimzy is revealed to be artificial life using nanotechnology created by Intel. Mimzy conveys that previous attempts to send such beings back in time failed due to the lack of an engineer, and Mimzy itself is deteriorating. To save the future, Mimzy needs a sample of uncorrupted human DNA to repair genetic damage from ecological disasters. The FBI does not believe the children, so they escape using their powers. Mimzy absorbs a tear from Emma containing her DNA. Noah constructs a time portal using the toys, and Mimzy returns to the future, leaving behind a Sri Yantra symbol. Larry, who witnesses the event, remarks that he saw 'numbers,' recalling a dream about lottery numbers he had missed. In the future, Mimzy provides the genetic information needed to restore humanity, and Emma is later called 'Our Mother' by the populace.

Development and production

The movie draws loosely from a 1943 story by Lewis Padgett, a joint pseudonym for Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, which originally ran in John W. Campbell's Astounding. While the core premise—that toys from the future warp children's thinking—stays intact, the details shift. In the original, the objects accidentally arrive from millions of years ahead, and the kids' altered perceptions happen naturally because their minds are still developing. Both the film and the story take their titles from the third line of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" in Through the Looking-Glass. Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich wrote the screenplay. The production crew included editor Alan Heim and sound designer Dane Davis. The Orphanage handled visual effects, and filming took place in Roberts Creek and at Collingwood School.

Reception

The Last Mimzy grossed nearly $21.5 million in North America and $6.1 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $27.5 million. Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 55% approval rating from 126 reviews, with an average score of 5.8/10. The site's consensus states that the film makes efforts to be a fun children's movie but unsuccessfully juggles too many genres and subplots, eventually settling as an unfocused, slightly dull affair. On Metacritic, the film scored 59 out of 100 from 25 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of B+. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called it wholesome, eager entertainment that does not talk down, and Ken Fox of TV Guide's Movie Guide described it as a thoughtful and sincere interpretation that gets kids and guardians thinking and talking. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution rated it a small gem, while the Chicago Sun-Times compared it unfavorably to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, calling it an emotionless empty shell. Critics diverged on scientific validity: Susan Granger noted that Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene and UCLA neurobehavioral genetics professor Susan Smalley found some validity in the science depicted. In contrast, Rick Norwood of The SF Site wrote that the film expunged all ideas from the story and replaced them with New Age nonsense, turning a personal story into an epic where childlike innocence saves the human race.