The Last Mimzy is a 2007 American science fiction adventure drama film directed by New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye. It was loosely based upon the 1943 science fiction short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym of husband-and-wife team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore). The film features Timothy Hutton, Joely Richardson, Rainn Wilson, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Clarke Duncan, and introduces Rhiannon Leigh Wryn as seven-year-old Emma Wilder and Chris O’Neil as ten-year-old Noah.
Plot
A scientist in the distant future has set out to avert a catastrophic ecological disaster, and sends a small number of high tech devices that resemble toys back in time to modern day Seattle. Here, they are discovered by two children: Noah Wilder and his younger sister, Emma. The "toys" are initially incomprehensible to them, other than one which appears to be a stuffed rabbit. The children keep their discovery secret from their parents.
Emma becomes telepathically connected to the rabbit, naming it "Mimzy", which imparts knowledge onto her. The children gain genius-level intellects and psionic powers: Noah can teleport objects using a card-sized rectangle of green lines of light and a conch shell to control spiders, but thanks to her link, Emma develops the more advanced abilities, becoming the only one who can use the "spinners", stones which can float and produce a force field. Emma describes herself as "the chosen one" but names Noah as "the engineer" without which she cannot "build the bridge to the future".
The children's parents and Larry White, Noah's science teacher, discover the devices and the children's powers. By mistake, Noah causes a power black-out over half the state of Washington, alerting the FBI to their activities. The family is held for questioning by Special Agent Nathaniel Broadman. The Mimzy is revealed as artificial life utilizing nanotechnology created by Intel.
Emma relates a dire message from Mimzy: Many Mimzys were sent into the past before her, but none of the others were able to return to their home time, because they lacked an "engineer" like Noah, and now Mimzy, the last one the scientist was able to send back, is beginning to disintegrate. To save the future, Mimzy must acquire a sample of uncorrupted human DNA to correct the damage done to DNA by ecological catastrophes. The FBI do not believe them, so Noah and Emma use their powers to escape. Mimzy absorbs a tear from Emma, which contains her DNA. Via the time portal which Noah constructs using the toys, Mimzy returns to the future.
Larry, who witnessed Mimzy leaving the present, says he saw "numbers", a reference to a previous dream he had which related to him the winning lottery numbers: He had missed out before by never buying a ticket. In the future, Mimzy provides the genetic information required to restore humanity, both physically and mentally, with Emma dubbed "Our Mother" by the people of the future.
Cast
Rhiannon Leigh Wryn as Emma Wilder
Chris O'Neil as Noah Wilder
Chris Sipe as Noah Wilder (other scenes) Timothy Hutton as David Wilder Joely Richardson as Jo Wilder Rainn Wilson as Larry White Kathryn Hahn as Naomi Schwartz Michael Clarke Duncan as FBI Special Agent Nathaniel Broadman Patrick Gilmore as FBI Task Force Agent Kirsten Williamson as Sheila Broadman Marc Musso as Harry Jones Megan McKinnon as Wendy Irene Snow as Lena, the story's narrator
Other characters
Mackenzie Hamilton and Calum Worthy cameo as teenage cyborgs. Well-known string theorist Brian Greene has a cameo appearance as an Intel scientist.
Development and production
The Last Mimzy is loosely based upon "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett (the pen name of collaborators Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore); the story appeared in John W. Campbell's magazine Astounding in 1943. The central idea of "toys" sent from the future to the present, and of the toys' alteration of the children's thought patterns remains, but with many differences. Originally, the transferral (from an unspecified date millions of years in the future) occurs by accident. The story makes the point that exposure to novel concepts would alter the children's perceptions "naturally" (irrespective of any intention on the part of the device's creator), since it would take place during an early phase of their intellectual development. Both the film's and short story's titles are derived from third line of the nonsense verse poem "Jabberwocky" in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. The adapted screenplay is by Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich.