Okay, I like the message of "The Last Mimzy." I like the gentleness and purity of the basic story. So I really wish I could say this was as good as "ET" or "The Wizard Of Oz" or any other great movie that appealed to both kids and adults...but nothing about it really fits.<br /><br />The story has promise -- Toys from the future are sent back to the past. They're found by a couple of very average kids living in Seattle, who use them to see the universe in new ways as they help the toys achieve their goal of finding some way of saving the future from the ruination of the past. There are moments of pure magic -- like when Noah, the ten-year-old boy, learns sounds can affect how a spider builds its webs, and when Emma, his five-year-old sister, sets the "spinners" going the first time.<br /><br />But nothing about this movie quite works. Not completely. Oh, the kids -- Chris O'Neal and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn -- do a good enough job of acting, especially considering how young they are and it's the first time they've been in front of a film camera. Rhiannon is startling natural in many ways, and Chris closely matches her. And Timothy Hutton, Joely Richardson and Michael Clarke Ward do well enough with poorly written roles. And therein lies much of the problem -- the script and choice of director.<br /><br />Bob Shaye has produced dozens of movies, so he probably thought he'd learned something about pacing and the shaping of an exciting story that is true to its universe. Instead, he comes across as a beginner. He's so focused on keeping the action going, he forgets to let the story breathe and grow. Maybe that was the way the script was written, but I doubt it. It seems like entire scenes have been cut because they didn't "move things along" in the way some action-adventure genre film might need. I especially miss the development of Noah going from a "C-" drub to a genius science engineer. All we're given is him looking at that spider, doing something on a computer and then BANG -- he's got a science project about bridges across the universe. It's like Shaye didn't know how to dramatize it, so just didn't. And many of the scenes' pacing is off -- like with the kids in the school. Boys tend to jump over each other, verbally, when they're talking; they don't talk, wait for you to talk, then talk. And the kids in this script don't use the same vocabulary as regular kids. Even the scene where the Feds break in -- usually a slam-dunk -- is done so amateurishly, it's disconcerting.<br /><br />Of course, the dialog IS what came out of the script, and much of it's lame. Simplistic. Unreal. The scene where Rainn Wilson and his fiancée meet with Joely to discuss Noah is brutal evidence of this. Nothing about it comes across as real or human...and that's the scriptwriting, not the acting or directing.<br /><br />The special effects are nice if a bit cheap. I love the look of Seattle and its environs as a way of showing what we're about to lose if we don't wise up. There are a couple of nightmarish moments that may scare kids under eight, but they work within the context of the story.<br /><br />Y'know...if they'd just had someone who knows kids' stories do a pass on the script and let someone else direct this movie, it would've been hit out of the park. Instead, I'm willing to give it a double for effort and intent. But man...why couldn't it have been a home run?