Serenity review

A noisy, messy and sometimes confused spectacle, Serenity is the latest big screen spin-off from a TV series, but the twist this time around is that the TV series in question was cancelled after only eleven episodes. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, developed the short-lived Firefly for US television in 2002, and thanks to huge interest in the DVD of the series as well as astonishing support from his fanbase, the film was greenlit. Fans of the show, or Browncoats as they call themselves, will rejoice, but those who don't know it may well wonder what all the fuss is about.

Set in the future, the film follows the exploits of the crew of Serenity, a battered spaceship that has seen better days, notably in the war against the Alliance forces that the crew lost. Now they survive by committing small scale robberies, but their most precious cargo by far is a young girl called River, who possesses extraordinary telepathic forces and represents a threat to the political stability of the universe.

In order to stop this threat, a conscience-free assassin chases the crew across time and space, allowing numerous catfights, deaths and plots to evolve. There's also a cannibalistic tribe called the Reavers hovering on the edge of space and ready to cause havoc.

What's particularly disappointing - and surprising - about Serenity is its lack of imagination. Whedon's big style idea - to make a Western set in space - consists of giving some of the characters six-shooters and long coats. That's it. Otherwise, this is redundant and formulaic stuff, which adds nothing new to the science fiction genre.

Even action fans expecting glorious special effects will be disappointed: much of the CGI work looks barely better than the high end TV work we are now used to. The cast manfully struggle through some choice space-style dialogue and to be fair they do come across as a cohesive unit, but they are all fairly simple types.

The fanfare of hype certainly doesn't deliver for Serenity, which is unlikely to convert the uninitiated to the original series. The converted should provide it with decent enough ticket sales though.

Paul Hurley