Serenity review

Multicultural in its sets, music, fighting styles, even dialogue; this is a worldly film, and a more realistic view of the space-faring future than Roddenberry, Lucas et al. have given us... with today's "taikonauts", is it a surprise that everyone would have picked up a little Chinese? Though typically, the viewer will encounter a mix of races and accents. The cowboy slang, probably the most overt of Firefly's eccentricies, could have doomed the film in less skilled hands, but here it comes off as utterly natural.

Effects are great for the budget, and the plot taps into relevant contemporary concerns. Serenity's "empire" is not evil in this case, but technocratic and determined to make everything look good on the books. There's a great deal of libertarian subtext, in particular cognitive liberty, with a heroine somewhere on the autistic spectrum and thinly veiled attacks on behavior-modification. Mass media, public schooling and the pharmaceutical industry all come under Whedon's fire here; the drug Pax, which either sends users into a stupor or a state of hyper-aggression, is perhaps symbolic of Ritalin and its amphetamine qualities.

After a spate of action films with no room for women (Riddick, Oldboy, Cronenberg's 'A History Of Violence'), I'm happy to report that Serenity is both feminist and refreshingly sex-positive; one never forgets, amid the techno-speak, that these are humans with human desires. It's like Robert Altman with warp drives.

Last of all, I like a film with a kicky sense of humor and Serenity is definitely that. "Dear Buddha, send me a toy rocket..."

So now that I've belabored the point: go out and see the damn thing already! You won't have more fun at a space-Western soap opera zombie martial arts film this year, I guarantee you.