As bad as movies get ...

Rating: 1/10 (17 February 2007)

Wow. I don't know where to begin. I had high hopes because Cuaron's HARRY POTTER movie was directing perfection. I had heard enough BLADERUNNER comparisons to make me giddy. I was saving this movie as a treat for myself after a year of mostly mediocre films. Cuaron can thank M Night Shyamalan for his atrocious LADY IN THE WATER that his film wasn't the bottom of my list this year.
This hokey, overwrought, noisy, ugly piece of garbage is film-making at its absolute worst.
First off, the BLADERUNNER comparisons are so incredibly superficial and undeserved, that I have to wonder if it isn't the film's PR machine putting out those comments. The one and only similarity is that they take place in the future. BLADERUNNER was a masterful amalgam of mood, music, art direction and story that you will never forget. (If you haven't seen it, go for the director's cut, and try to see it on a big screen revival if possible.)
CHILDREN is bleak, with no artistry or imagery to speak of. All I seem to recall are scenes filled with tenements, chain link fences and rubble. If it's derived from a video game, I wouldn't be at all surprised, with its exaggerated violence and action par for that medium. And the story is just so stupid. No babies have been born anywhere for 20 years, but there just happens to be one pregnant woman somewhere in London? What about New Guinea, or the deepest Amazon? And if the clichÃ© of a newborn-as-hope-for-the-future hasn't been done to death, then I'll be equally willing to buy into the story about the prostitute-with-the-heart-of gold.
If our world is destined to be fraught with problems, let's try solving them now, and forget about placing them on the shoulders of future generations.
Grade: F