CHANNING TATUM & MILA KUNIS IN JUPITER ASCENDING

2015 rating: **

The Wachowskis deserve credit for, like their first MATRIX, coming up with a pulpy yarn not based on an established franchise or comic book or a teenager’s favorite dystopian-future novel… And with a super-heroine name like Jupiter Jones, it’s surprising that Mila Kunis’ character has such a mundane life, cleaning toilets and desperate enough to sell her eggs (yes, those eggs) for an eBay telescope: Something inside must yearn for the stars and, as they say, be careful what you wish for…

Tatum

But when it includes a dashing, handsome, solidly built half-wolf with Vulcan ears and roller-skate thrusters instead of shoes, perhaps that price isn’t so bad. Soon enough she’s blindly smitten by his looks alone, deleting any reluctance and awe for being catapulted into this extremely bizarre circumstance.

In the resilient protector role is Channing Tatum. His Caine Wise is a cross between Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Western loner and Superman, which makes Jupiter an ideal Lois Lane. They even fly around together when he’s not getting her out of close calls: Which is all JUPITER ASCENDING amounts to: With a barrage of rambling exposition explaining the complicated star world run by an interstellar royal family pulling Jupiter... who happens to be their Queen... like a political wishbone, the action scenes are what you'll remember in this potentially epic science-fantasy that winds up merely filling time and space.