'Ender's Game' review: Space film has zero gravity

The people on-screen during the sci-fi behemoth "Ender's Game" are watching other people on other screens with such ridiculous frequency you'll wonder if director Gavin Hood is making a pre-emptive joke about the people who'll be tweeting at his movie, telling other people to stay away.

But no, the movie takes itself far too seriously for that: It even allows its young space commander hero to ask, near the end of what is a very long space trip, "Why are we seeing these images?" Which is the kind of softball that's almost too ripe to take a swing at.

Why are we seeing these images? Because the original 1985 "Ender" novel (revised/reissued in 1991) by Orson Scott Card has already spawned an entire series of books, and now it has birthed the first of what is set up to be a fleet of motion pictures -- a slow-moving-to-the-point-of-narcosis fleet of motion pictures, judging by the first.

It boasts not only unconvincing actors floating dreamily through space, but also a color palette that belongs in a hospital, music that belongs in an elevator and production design that -- like a fireworks display -- is flashy, bright and devoid of either context or intelligence.

Young Asa Butterfield, the cute kid from "Hugo," is now less cute and less than engaging as Ender Wiggin, a Battle School wannabe who comes under the gaze of the austere Col. Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford, fulminating). Graff sees in the boy the kind of talent, and/or sociopathy, that can save mankind from what is sure to be a second attack by the Formics, a race of insectoids that have already wreaked havoc on mankind.

The story of "Ender's Game" involves Ender's adjustment to being a prodigy, a leader of men/women and the savior of his race. It's all setup to a sequel. None of it is convincing in the least.

And even director Hood ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine") seems to let his own attention wander, becoming fixated on the shiny objects that float about the space station, sleepily, dreamily and with no fixed destination.

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PLOT The geek will inherit the Earth -- or, at least, whatever spaceship is assigned the task of saving humanity and committing intergalactic genocide.

RATING PG-13 (violence, action, adult content)

CAST Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley

LENGTH 1:54

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BOTTOM LINE Set in zero gravity, it has zero gravity. Stay home. Play a video game.