Way back in the day, I read the short story (”Mimsy Were the Borogoves”) that the 2007 film, The Last Mimzy, was based on.   So when I saw the movie was on TV, I decided to give it a shot.

If nothing else, I’m glad I saw it for the sheer audacity of the product placements alone.  Okay, I know there are plenty of product placements in movies these days.  So I wasn’t too disturbed by the Nike golf ball and wasn’t particularly discomfited by the teleporting Sprite can.  But holy shit…I’ve never seen a movie where an integral plot point, something central to the entire movie, is based entirely on a freaking product placement.  The absolute balls of it amazed me…and took me completely out of the story of course.  It’s the Intel moment if you’ve already seen it.

But okay, the movie itself: nothing horrible, just bland and fair.  The short story was so funny and subversive and even dark (depending on how you saw the ending) that I was surprised that the film was mindless, if unoffensive, popcorn fare.  A young boy and his younger sister find a box of strange toys on the beach.  The more the kids play with them, the stranger the toys become.  They begin to have weird effects on the kids, causing their parents to grow concerned.

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