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Here's a look at the new movie I saw this week.

Ender's Game
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, and Hailee Steinfeld
Synopsis: When Orson Scott Card unveiled his short story, and later novel, of “Ender’s Game,” it was a huge hit. For the time it was unique, and it opened up a new world in young adult fiction. It has also become choice reading for a number of military academies and organizations. But the short story first appeared in 1977. While the story and the subsequent book series were ahead of their time then, it’s now 2013, and the movie version of “Ender’s Game” feels like another in a long line of films aiming for the same core audience. This is a similar problem that happened to “John Carter,” which was a forerunner in literature but felt passé by the time it was adapted to be a film. “Ender’s Game” feels like a young adult fiction adaptation in a marketplace full of them. Worse yet, it’s missing the traditional trappings that would make for a compelling film franchise. At the time the book was released, “Ender’s Game” would have been shocking. It depicts child soldiers. It’s a sci-fi book aimed at — and told from the vantage point of — children. And it sets up an in-depth post apocalyptic series. But in the more than 25 years of development it took to bring the story to the screen, times have changed. “Ender’s Game” is hardly the first film in recent years to tackle this subject. “The Hunger Games,” which were released years later as books but made it to the big screen first, offered a more compelling exploration of children and warfare when it debuted last March. And rather than being unique in its voice and audience, in 2013 “Ender’s Game” is one of a half dozen book series seeking to become a popular film franchise by tapping into the young adult audience. So for it to succeed, it has to be incredibly well done. This simply isn’t. It’s a fine film with adequate performances, but it’s hard to follow. Much has been written of the difficulty in adapting the books to the big screen. For years the film went through different drafts and different concepts. Characters and sequences changed, morphed or were dropped completely. A lot of work went into adapting the dense literature into a two-hour film. While it is OK as a film, it feels like a lot of the story has been trimmed. As a result, it feels choppy and incomplete to someone — like me — who hasn’t read the books. It’s clear that this is set up to be a series, but the narrative focus and purpose of the film is muddled. There are some interesting sequences and ideas, but there is little compelling about the characters and the overall arc of the film. “Ender’s Game” is well shot and put together, and it has a strong cast with Ford, Davis, Butterfield and Ben Kingsley. But for this kind of a film to become a franchise, there needs to be a compelling hook. There just isn’t one here. The movie is mildly entertaining, but that’s hardly enough to keep audiences coming back time and again. Fans of the book will likely be pleased, but those not familiar with the source material will likely be lost.
Rating: PG-13 for some violence, sci-fi action and thematic material.
Verdict: Two stars out of four.

Upcoming Releases:

Friday, November 8 — "About Time," "Thor: The Dark World," "The Book Thief"

Friday, November 15 — "Best Man Holiday"

Friday, November 22 — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," "Delivery Man"

Wednesday, November 27 — "Frozen," "Homefront," "Oldboy," "Black Nativity"