Jupiter Ascending Is 'So Bad It's Almost Good'

A perplexing plot, awkward-looking costumes, and interspecies romance converge in Jupiter Ascending, from Lana and Andy Wachowski of The Matrix. Hold on to your seat, you're in for a bumpy, intergalactic ride. Here's what critics are saying:

• It's "a big, woozy, spacey fairy tale with a science-fiction exoskeleton and a core of pure mush," Manohla Dargis writes at the New York Times. "Crammed with plot turns and eye-bulging visuals," the flick ends up "baroque and corny," she writes. The wolf-like ears worn by Channing Tatum's character "are amusing but they're almost all that's memorable about the sketchily conceived Caine." Both Tatum and Mila Kunis "just seem to be trying to keep up with the action."
• Jupiter Ascending is "a mostly entertaining mess, a cosmic soup of baroque grandeur that the Wachowskis swim happily through, even if few others will," Jake Coyle writes at the AP. He finds it "blatantly silly," and the plot "takes a long time to clear up." Though her character "is always in need of being swooped out of danger by her hulking werewolf man," Kunis "does an admirable job," he writes.

• Lou Lumenick at the New York Post says the movie is "so bad it's almost good." He writes it's "so jaw-droppingly awful that you can't wait to see what happens next (and that was without the use of mood-altering substances on my part)." As for the "original" plot, "I quit counting the homages to other films after passing the 50 mark," he says. At least it isn't boring, "and Kunis somehow manages to survive with her dignity intact."
• Peter Howell at the Toronto Star has no kind words to share. "Why is it that the more the Wachowskis unleash their imaginations, the more their thoughts turn to cheese?" he writes. The action grinds to a halt because everything needs explaining, he says. He adds Eddie Redmayne, up for best actor at the Oscars, could soon see a Razzie nomination for his "over-the-top galactic despot performance."

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