The emperor has no clothes

Rating: 1/10 (20 October 2015)

I'm a Britophile: I like British movies and British actors. I'm also a lover of Sci-fi, so I loved the idea of a British sci-fi that people were saying was actually good. I first saw Children of Men and I wasn't blown away, in fact I was vaguely bothered, but if you'd asked me about it last week I'd have said it was a pretty good movie. Having watched it again I would not say the same.
The good: the atmosphere is good, Michael Caine is pretty good and Clive Owen is OK.
The bad: the plot is wafer thin and there's no exposition: don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't leave unanswered questions or leave the audience to figure out how some things happened, but there's just too much in this movie. Perhaps the book explained a lot more, but for us who haven't read it the movie is just an extended chase scene in a possible future, but without a good reason given for why the future is the way it is or why the chase is even necessary or what it will achieve.
The other problem is that technology doesn't seem to have moved on in over fifteen years. Of course this is always gonna be a problem for low budget movies, but it does remove one of the main reasons I like sci-fi: the chance to see what new cars, weapons, fashions etc. can be dreamt up by the film makers.
I think the first critics who saw this movie had low expectations and were pleasantly surprised, but I do notice that as more and more people have seen it its rating has dropped as people begin to realize the emperor has no clothes.