The future is trying to tell us something.
"Put down the phone, shut up the shop
Make all the techno-babble stop
We'll find a short-wave frequency
A wave connecting you and me"
-- Roger Waters, "Hello (I Love You)", original song from The Last Mimzy
Based on the acclaimed sci-fi short story by Lewis Padgett, The Last Mimzy tells the story of two children who discover a mysterious box that contains some strange devices they think are toys. As the children play with these "toys," they begin to display higher and higher intelligence levels. Their teacher reports to their parents that they seem to be growing beyond genius. Their parents, too, realize something extraordinary is happening. Emma, the younger of the two, tells her confused mother that one of the toys, a stuffed toy rabbit, is apparently called Mimzy and that "she teaches me things."
Emma's mom becomes increasingly concerned, when suddenly a blackout shuts down the city. The government traces the source of the power surge to the family's house. Things quickly spin wildly out of control. The children are focused on these strange objects, Mimzy, and the important mission on which they seem to have been sent. When the little girl says that Mimzy contains a most serious message from the future, a scientific scan shows that Mimzy is part extremely high level electronics, and part organic! Everyone realizes that they are involved in something incredible...but exactly what?
The Last Mimzy features an ensemble cast that includes Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, General's Daughter), Joely Richardson (The Patriot, Nip/Tuck), Rainn Wilson (The Office), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), and newcomers Rhiannon Leigh Wryn and Chris O'Neil as the children, Emma and Noah. It is produced by Michael Phillips (The Sting, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and directed by Bob Shaye (executive producer of, among other films, The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Shaye is also founder, Co-Chairman, and Co-CEO of New Line Cinema.
The Last Mimzy is based on the 1943 short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym for Henry Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore); the adapted screenplay is by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact) and Toby Emmerich (Frequency), from a screen story by James V. Hart & Carol Skilken.
As an average student with a gifted younger sister, 10-year-old Noah Wilder (Chris O'Neil) concludes that "life sucks." He and his parents have succumbed to the trappings of today's world, and a humdrum life. Only his 5 year old sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), resists them.
But during a family vacation, Noah and Emma find a strange box that washes up on shore. At once frightened and captivated, Noah wraps the mysterious object in his beach towel and smuggles it home.
Inside the box, Noah and Emma find several curious things: a crystal shaped like a large credit card, a "gelatinous mass" that looks like brain coral, a jagged meteorite-like rock (that later breaks into nine "spinners,") a sea shell and, most alluring of all, a beat-up stuffed rabbit. It seems to whisper in Emma's ear, "Mimzy."
The mysterious rabbit Mimzy telepathically communicates with Emma allowing her to develop astonishing skills. As the kids begin to explore the various toys, seemingly impossible abilities develop in them. Emma discovers the spinners twirl to form a vortex that dematerializes objects placed within it; from the sea shell Noah learns to manipulate nature, taking his school's science fair by storm when he "instructs" spiders to build an elongated web; and from the crystal to develop the ability to move objects through time and space at his mental bidding. Each new discovery builds upon the last, and soon the children are in a world of wonder, enthralled by the unbelievable possibilities the toys seem to offer.
But Noah and Emma's unusually blissful state doesn't go unnoticed by their mother, who senses something is up. Jo Wilder's (Joely Richardson) instincts are correct but she is unable to see, understand, and therefore articulate what her children are experiencing. When Noah first shows his mother the crystal card, she doesn't see what he sees. She only sees a piece of slate. Noah and Emma, as children, are able to see the potential in the toys; Jo, the adult stuck in fixed thought patterns, fails to see anything besides the obvious. This failure to think creatively leaves Jo frightened and vulnerable, unable to help either herself or her family.
Worse still, Jo finds herself alone with her fears, coping with a hard-working husband, David (Timothy Hutton), who is absent too much of the time to clue into the nuances of his children's lives. Even when Noah exhibits uncharacteristic intelligence and creativity at his school's science fair with a project far in excess of his previous capability, David remains stubbornly myopic.
After the fair, Noah's science teacher, Larry White (Rainn Wilson), is understandably suspicious. White's curiosity is further piqued when he discovers Noah has been drawing intricate mandalas that mimic the great Buddhist drawings of earlier centuries; and, as if to deepen the mystery, one of Noah's drawings perfectly mirrors an image that White has seen recurring in his dreams. It's an astrological configuration representing the past and the future that he first saw during an extended stay in Tibet. But what could possibly be the connection between White, Noah, and ancient Buddhist teachings?
As White and the parents try to decipher exactly what is happening, Larry's girlfriend Naomi (Kathryn Hahn) develops a theory that perhaps Noah is a "tulkus," a child believed to be imbued with special knowledge and extraordinary abilities. But to their surprise, it is not Noah, but Emma, who exhibits the telltale signs: "I've never seen anything so pure," exclaims Naomi when she examines Emma's hand.
Events escalate in the wake of this discovery. Just how far out of everyone's league this is becomes apparent when the Department of Homeland Security in Seattle, led by Agent Broadman (Michael Clarke Duncan) suspects an act of terrorism, storms the Wilder home and sequesters the family under the Patriot Act. Days earlier, Noah, while experimenting with the toys, had created some form of "generator" that, when accidentally activated, let out a pulse so intense it caused a major blackout through much of the state. Alarmed, the authorities investigate and trace the source of the blackout to the Wilder home. The family is taken to a nearby research facility where agents question them.
The toys are confiscated and put under intense scientific scrutiny, revealing a technology more advanced than anything in existence. Then Emma reveals that their mission is to return Mimzy with something from our genes, to the future, to save humanity. Thwarted in their mission by the authorities, and with Mimzy and the other toys slowly beginning to deteriorate, a desperate Noah and Emma use the skills they have acquired to execute a daring escape from the research facility. Stealing a van - which Noah has "learned" to drive in a video game - they intend to go to the cottage where two undamaged spinners lay hidden beneath Noah's bed. Despite having outwitted the authorities, Noah and Emma find themselves stymied by a more mundane foe: the van runs out of gas. But Emma isn't worried, for she has learned to communicate telepathically, sending a message to Larry in his dreams. Pushed by Naomi into responding, Larry agrees to drive out to the place in his dream, a roadside restaurant where Emma and Noah are waiting.
After being picked up by Naomi and Larry, a distraught Emma cries for the impending loss of Mimzy. She cries and in Emma's tears is the key for future humanity's rescue: her DNA. This is because in Emma's unpolluted DNA are the genes to restore a vital emotion to humanity, a emotion that the future has lost.
At the cottage, Emma and Noah set about creating the time/space bridge that will take Mimzy back to her world, combining what they have learned from the toys to generate a "mandala cocoon" for Mimzy's flight. But as soon as they achieve this, the authorities and their parents arrive on the scene. Luckily, all arrive too late to stop the process, but to everyone's shock, Emma is swept up into the energy field that surrounds the cocoon.
Frantic adults all try to penetrate the field but are thrown back by its energy-any moment now Emma will be lost. As the penumbra rises ever higher, Noah suddenly sees a way to save his sister: He wiggles his young body beneath the rising energy field, grabs hold of his sister's leg and pulls her free just as a wormhole appears above the cocoon and sucks it up. One last blinding burst of energy and Mimzy is gone.
As Jo and David embrace their children, Agent Broadman, unable to comprehend what he has just witnessed, admits that he doesn't understand but he is sorry for his intrusion into their strange private life. For Larry and Naomi, the night's events bring resolution and a happy strange coincidence.
Meanwhile, in the future, we see the ultimate impact of Mimzy's return. Emma's DNA ultimately unlocks the dormant genes that comprise innocence. Emma, with the help of Mimzy, has returned humanity to mankind.
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