'Jupiter Ascending': A Cinderella-in-space tale

If The Matrix was full of bullet-time thrills and cool Keanu-ness, if Cloud Atlas was goofily cartoonish in its attempt to bring David Mitchell's across-the-cosmos novel to the screen, then Andy and Lana Wachowski's latest, Jupiter Ascending, falls somewhere in between - with Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, and Star Wars as reference points.

"Technically, I'm an alien," Mila Kunis voice-overs, by way of introduction to this epically kitschy space opera, which begins in a Moscow apartment, then drops in on a childbirth on a tiny freighter in the Atlantic, before moving to here-and-now Chicago. It's in the Windy City, with windy dialogue, that the titular heroine lives and works with her Russian émigré family.

It's all drudgery: up before dawn to clean houses (scrubbing toilets with particular zeal), no romance, not even enough money to buy a telescope, which is something Jupiter wants badly. To gaze at all those worlds beyond.

But then, at a fertility clinic where she's donating her eggs for a few thousand bucks, those other worlds intrude. Shape-shifting E.T.s are determined to kill her. Then, some guy with pointy ears and a devilish Vandyke intervenes. He has "gravity boots" that enable him to surf the skies and has an interesting lineage: He's a "splice" - a genetically engineered interplanetary soldier, made of human and wolf DNA (and Channing Tatum DNA, too).

Almost unrecognizable from the tragic Olympian he plays in Foxcatcher, the actor is Caine Wise, and he'll spend the rest of the movie saving Jupiter, losing Jupiter, then swooping Jupiter up in his arms again. He calls her "Your Majesty." As the Wachowskis have it, she is literally an alien: an Earthling with the genomes of the Abrasax. No, not a cleansing product to help with housekeeping chores, but an impossibly entitled and unlikable clan from the other side of the galaxy. And she's a royal heir.

Kalique Abrasax (Tuppence Middleton) is the sister, shedding her Flash Gordon gowns to dip into a regenerative Jacuzzi and emerge decades younger. Titus Abrasax (Douglas Booth) is the handsome smoothie who lives in an outer-space Playboy Mansion.

Balem Abrasax is the softspoken, sinister royal bent on killing Jupiter because the unwitting Abrasax heir stands in the way of his plans to "harvest" Earth (i.e., annihilate it).

Balem is played by Eddie Redmayne, Oscar-nominated for his performance as theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne can only hope Academy members steer clear of Jupiter Ascending, at least until they've cast their votes. His hammily debauched airs and plummy line readings ("That planet belongs to me!") can only cast doubt on the actor's skills and judgment.

As for Kunis, she gets to wear some out-of-this-world couture, and gets to make her entrance at a marriage ceremony on a floating dais, kind of like Katy Perry at the Super Bowl.

A lot like Katy Perry at the Super Bowl, in fact, if Katy Perry were being menaced by gnarly minions of the House of Abrasax.

And who knows, maybe she was.

Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski. With Mila Kunis,

Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Sean Bean.

Distributed by Warner Bros.

Running time: 1 hour, 52 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (violence, gnarly aliens, adult themes).

Playing at: Area theaters.EndText

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