SERENITY Directed by Joss Whedon, runs 119 minutes. Opens Friday (September 30), see Movie Listings. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
Serenity works equally well as a stand-alone light science fiction adventure and as a closer to writer/director Whedon’s cult favourite TV series, Firefly. There’s plenty of well-mounted action and effects and so many nifty futuristic sights that you wish Whedon would occasionally pause to give us a better look. The full series cast returns to the ship, Serenity, and their lives of taking mostly illegal jobs on the fringes of the galactic empire. This time, they’re carrying a teenage psychotic/warrior woman (look for the Buffy tribute shot) pursued by an empire assassin. The acting and emotional moments have a strong whiff of TV, but that’s more than made up for by Whedon’s gracefully loopy dialogue, here brought to full flower.