‘L5’ More Facade Than Real Space City

The title of “L5: First City in Space” makes the latest 3-D Imax film sound more interesting than it is.

As a narrator tells us, L5 is a metropolis of the future with a population of 10,000, located on a point along the moon’s orbit five days’ journey from Earth. The weak gravitational pull of the chosen location enables spaceships to come and go easily, making L5 “a gateway to the solar system.”

Unfortunately, this juvenile documentary gives no sense of a city, except for a computer graphic that depicts L5’s rotating, multilevel superstructure. The closest the film comes to creating the impression of a town, much less a city in space 100 years from now, is a brief glimpse of what could pass for a shopping mall in off-hours. The glimpse is so artificial, not to say lifeless, that “Mall in Space” would be a more fitting title.

We meet one family: Chieko, her parents and her grandfather, the city’s chief scientist. Judging from what is pictured on the screen, there are more hydroponic plants and farm animals living on L5 than people.

The plot, such as it is, also promises more than it delivers. Told in flashback, it centers on Chieko as a young girl, when L5’s life-support system has reached its limit; unless a new source of water is found, growth of the city will be limited, too.

Grandfather has a Mulholland-like solution. All they have to do is divert a comet, now approaching Jupiter, and get it to pass near Earth. Since the comet largely consists of ice, L5 engineers could simply chip some off each time the comet comes around. Voila! They’ll have water galore.

So they send an unmanned rocket to change the comet’s path; but once the rocket lands, its thrusters fail to fire on command, leaving the orbit unchanged.

Not to worry. Chieko’s father undertakes a successful, fix-it mission--although, typically, the film fails to give us the slightest idea of how he fixes it.

We must take that on faith, just as we must take on faith that the inhabitants of L5 have anything to do besides pet and feed the animals, tend the plants and visit friends on Earth by tuning to a virtual-reality channel.

The 3-D effects are routine and not nearly as good as the previous IMAX release, “Across the Sea of Time,” which also integrated the 3-D imagery into the theme of the story. First-time 3-D viewers will nonetheless be impressed by the technology.

Except for an old-fashioned Saturn launch, circa the 1990s, nothing seen in “L5” turns out to be worthy of the NASA technology said to have gone into its making. Even the Mars flyover, with its small-scale look of an arcade game, is a disappointment. Save your money.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: family entertainment, appropriate for children.

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‘L5: First City in Space’

Colin Fox: Grandfather

Rachel Walker: Chieko

Denis Akiyama: Father

Genevieve Langlois: Mother

Martha Henry: Narrator

A IMAX 3-D production, released by the IMAX Corp. Live-action director Allan Kroeker. Supervising director, producer, writer and editor Toni Myers. Co-producer Graeme Ferguson. Executive producer Jonathan Barker. Cinematographers Andrew Kitzanuk and Noel Archambault. Music Micky Erbe and Maribeth Solomon. Production design Stephen Roloff. L5 and Spacecraft design Pat Rawlings. Supervising sound editor Peter Thillaye. Running time: 35 minutes.

* Exclusively at Edwards 21 Cinemas, Irvine Spectrum, 65 Fortune, Irvine, (714) 450-4900.