Line #41 Film/TheLastMimzy


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mimzy.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Today, I'm going to show you a story. Let's all tune in together. A long time ago, the soul of our planet was sick. People had become isolated...warlike. Our world was frightened. It was dying. But a great scientist was trying to save us. He had tried many times, and knew he could only try once more. This was the last Mimzy."''
4	-->-- '''Teacher in Meadow'''
5
6	A 2007 film centered around Noah Wilder, a video game-loving, somewhat irritable young man who believes that "school sucks, life sucks, and [he] suck[s]", and his sensitive and precocious younger sister Emma Wilder. While on vacation with their parents over spring break, Noah and Emma find a box filled with strange objects that are incomprehensible to them except for a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy that can communicate with Emma. Sensing that there is something odd about their find, they keep it a secret from their parents, particularly after Noah tries to show a translucent rock filled with constantly shifting green triangles to his mother and it appears to her to be a normal rock. Emma becomes emotionally attached to Mimzy as the mysterious objects begin to give the siblings psychic abilities and increase their mental capacities to genius level. Noah's science teacher Larry and his mystic wife Naomi get involved when Larry notices that Noah has been drawing mandalas, and the situation becomes serious when Noah accidentally assembles the objects into a generator that causes a blackout in the entire city of UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}}. The FBI discovers the source of the surge and the Wilder family members are arrested; meanwhile, Emma has elucidated that Mimzy and the other objects were sent from the future, and it is up to her and Noah to figure out how to send Mimzy back to her own time and save humanity's future.
7
8	The film is inspired by the short story "Literature/MimsyWereTheBorogoves" by Creator/HenryKuttner and Creator/CLMoore.
9
10	----
11	!!This film provides examples of:
12
13	* AdultsAreUseless: "I showed the green glass thing to Mom. She thought it was a paperweight." Indeed, by the end of the film, the adults--except for Larry and Naomi--are little more than hindrances to Noah and Emma. They ''thought'' they were helping out by throwing away the objects and Mimzy because it made Emma have a seizure but in the end, hindrance.
14	** The parents didn't even know about Emma's seizure. Noah called them while it was happening, but Emma woke up before they entered the room. Mrs. Wilder threw out the objects because she thought all the "weirdness"--specifically, Emma levitating--would stop once she tossed them.
15	** Larry even admits "this is SO far out of my league" when the Wilders describe what Emma did with the sugar.
16	** Nathaniel Broadman and the Intel guy also openly admit they have no idea what's going on after seeing Emma use the "spinners".
17	* AllMythsAreTrue: Particularly Tibetan ones about mandalas.
18	* AppliedPhlebotinum: Noah and Emma use the generator to [[spoiler: build a bridge across spacetime to send Mimzy back to the future]].
19	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: There is no DNA in tears. Well, technically, anyway. But "Emma's DNA from comparatively rapidly shedding epithelial skin cells that were transferred from her cheek to her tear" doesn't sound as good as "Emma's tears".
20	* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Noah is abrasive to Emma at first, but by the end of the movie they are getting along swimmingly, and Noah ends up [[spoiler: saving Emma's life]].
21	** Also demonstrated earlier when Noah tells Emma that their new "toys" could be dangerous. He does it gruffly, but he was clearly worried that Emma might have seriously hurt her arm after sticking it in the field produced by the "spinners".
22	* BigBlackout: Noah accidentally causes a blackout that affects half of the state of Washington when two "toys" fuse to create a powerful generator. While the power goes back on very quickly, it leads Noah and his family to be {{Mistaken For Terrorist}}s by the FBI once they trace the source of the blackout.
23	* BigNo: Emma's reaction when her mom tries to make her throw away Mimzy. Thankfully, Noah rescues Mimzy and the toys from the dumpster later.
24	* BrickJoke: Larry White's dream-visions of winning lottery numbers and mandalas [[spoiler: he sees one in the end]].
25	* ByTheEyesOfTheBlind: Emma is the only one who can understand Mimzy.
26	* CheerfulChild: Emma, though not obnoxiously so.
27	* TheChosenOne:
28	** Emma is the one with the task she needs Noah in order to carry out.
29	** It's revealed that there were other Chosen Ones that received the Mimzies in their respective time periods, but they didn't have Engineers to build the necessary bridge to get Mimzy back to the future.
30	* CloseOnTitle: The movie's title appears after Teacher Lena finishes the story of the attempt, and the students leaving.
31	%%* ComingOfAgeStory: For Noah
32	* CompanionCube: When Emma gets attached to Mimzy, she starts carrying her everywhere. Emma even becomes very distressed when separated from Mimzy for any length of time.
33	* CrapsackWorld: The future from which Mimzy comes. Poison, war, destruction, you name it. It looked like {{Mordor}}.
34	* ExtraDimensionalShortcut: An example that doesn't involve a human taking a shortcut. When Noah is developing his cross-time/space-continuum-bridge-building abilities, he does this to a golf ball, making his dad think he smacked the ball 300 feet.
35	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Larry White's speech on how pollution damages DNA and causes harmful mutations. He has no idea how right he was.
36	* GreenAesop: Justified in that the earth actually does go to shit in the future, which is why Mimzy was sent back to Emma; to obtain a sample of healthy DNA.
37	* HairRaisingHare: Mimzy near the end because of the message that she brings.
38	** BunniesForCuteness: But she's so cute!
39	* HumansArePsychicInTheFuture: Well, not the CrapsackWorld future from which Mimzy was sent, but an even later future in which a teacher tells the story of Emma and Noah to an assembled class. This is justified because [[spoiler:Emma gains psychic powers from the objects from the future and then gives some of her DNA to Mimzy. Said DNA was then used to "cure" the sick people of the future, and presumably was responsible for their new abilities]].
40	* IAteWhat: While discussing the ethics of killing animals for food, Noah points out that there's hypocrisy in Emma eating "chopped up cow" (hamburger).
41	--> '''Emma:''' (with her mouth full) [[ComicallyMissingThePoint What chopped up cow]]?
42	--> '''Noah:''' What do you think hamburger is?
43	--> '''Emma:''' ([[SpitTake Spits]] [[OhCrap it out]])
44	* InvisibleToAdults: The objects aren't actually invisible to adults, but Mimzy appears to be a normal stuffed animal [[spoiler: at first glance]] and the awesome shifting green glass triangle thing looks like...a paperweight.
45	* TheLastTitle: The title.
46	* TheMenInBlack: The FBI agents who storm the Wilder house.
47	%%* MsViceGirl: Naomi is incredibly eager with her dabbling in/appropriating vaguely Eastern mysticism... mainly because her husband Larry had a dream several years ago that perfectly predicted a winning set of lottery numbers, and she's been trying to strike it lucky again. She does mention "Can you imagine how many people we could have helped with that money?", but it comes off like a justification for her greed.
48	* MultipleHeadCase: Noah's science teacher brings a two-headed snake named Charlie to class.
49	* MundaneUtility: Emma uses her telepathy to put sugar into her dad's coffee.
50	* OurWormholesAreDifferent: They can be telepathically built by a preteen boy to transport a ridiculously high-tech rabbit plushie into the future.
51	* PostApocalypticGasmask: Humans of the future must wear respirators and green body-suits because they cannot withstand the toxins in future-Earth's environment.
52	* ProductPlacement: Actually fits well into a very clever moment. When the bunny is examined closely it is discovered to be made of [[spoiler: microprocessors -- ''Intel'' microprocessors. This is obviously met with much shock by the lab as Intel can't do anything like this... yet]].
53	* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: Mimzy is a stuffed bunny.
54	* RunningGag: "Did you see numbers?" "No."
55	* SageLoveInterest: Naomi is one to Larry, with her Eastern mysticism and New Agey philosophy. Subverted a bit when it's shown that she's not above earthly temptations (like winning in a lottery), but her sage advice is still very helpful to the main characters.
56	* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: This is the intention of the scientist who created Mimzy.
57	* ShoutOut: To Lewis Carroll's ''Alice Through the Looking Glass'', particularly the poem "{{Literature/Jabberwocky}}".
58	* SupportingProtagonist: Noah is the protagonist of the film, but Emma is actually TheChosenOne and Noah is her assistant/"The Engineer".
59	* TimeTravel: Mimzy is from the future. The bulk of the plot is sending her back.
60	* TheUnintelligible: Mimzy. The audience can hear her make a humming sound, but only Emma can actually understand her (except for when Emma first picks her up and the audience can just make out "Mim...zy!").
61	* WeWillAllFlyInTheFuture: [[spoiler:After humanity is brought back from the brink of extinction and the future looks bright, children float through the air to assemble on a grassy knoll for their school lessons, then floats away like dandelion seeds.]]
62	* WeirdnessCensor: What Mrs. Wilder tries to invoke (after Noah and Emma get PsychicPowers, she spends half the movie plugging her ears and going "la-la-la, my kids aren't magic, the paranormal doesn't exist").
63	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Mr. White raves about Noah's project and claims that it could win the National Science Fair, but we never know if Noah even placed. We also don't know if the kids kept their newfound abilities. Or if the former babysitter will continue to tell everyone the Wilders are aliens.
64	* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: The teacher in the meadow, whose accent isn't identifiable. Justified due to how language changes over time-presumably her accent is one not yet developed.

Context Film / TheLastMimzy