Jupiter Ascending

You have to hand it to Lana and Andy Wachowski: they don’t do things by halves. Fresh from blending dystopian sci-fi, period drama, posh-boy cannibalism and just about everything else under the sun in the gloriously insane ‘Cloud Atlas’, they’ve taken a step backwards, forwards and skywards with this berserk space opera.

‘Jupiter Ascending’ weaves in the messianic elements of ‘The Matrix’, the punch-in-the-eye visual intensity of ‘Speed Racer’ and the fruity performances of ‘Cloud Atlas’ – not to mention random splashes of ‘Dune’, ‘Foundation’, ‘Flash Gordon’, ‘Barbarella’ and ‘Brazil’ – into one breathtaking, mindscrambling, what-the-hell-am-I-watching intergalactic fantasy. It could very well end their careers, but they’ll be going out with one hell of a bang.

Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, a Russian immigrant in modern-day Chicago whose workaday life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes an assassination target for scenery-shredding Shakespearean psycho Eddie Redmayne, the universe’s premier power-broker. Whisked to safety by hired hunter Channing Tatum (part wolf, part man, all beefcake) and his amazing anti-grav boots, Jupiter learns that she is the genetic reincarnation of the Queen of the Universe, a title which grants her infinite wealth and the power to control bees for some reason.

We’d love to say that the Wachowskis manage to wrangle all these disparate elements into a satisfying whole, but this is one mad mess from start to finish, crammed with flying dinosaur sidekicks, fetish-mask robots, impossible-to-follow intrigue and ripe, bizarrely straight-faced dialogue. But the sheer ambition is impossible to ignore, and the sense of fun is infectious: you may fear for your sanity during ‘Jupiter Ascending’, but you’ll come out smiling.