When a diverse group of children find themselves left behind at Summer Camp when aliens suddenly invade Earth, they are unexpectedly tasked with getting a NASA an encryption key to JPL so that the army can halt the alien advance, but to do so, they’re going to have to make it across a decimated Los Angeles with a dangerous and unkillable alien on their tails.
If this movie reminded me of anything, it would be The Goonies meets E.T. meets Alien. It’s a light-hearted affair, but at the same time, you honestly believe that these kids lives are in serious danger… it’s the type of movie that they just don’t make anymore and would have been perfectly at home if it was released in the 1980’s.
That being said, the movie does have its flaws. A lot of the racial jokes against black and Asian people certainly felt like they belong in 80’s movies and the way that the black character was written was pretty terrible even if they did attempt to give him a character arc… it was still rather cringe. And I mean cringe like Skids and Mudflap in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen cringe. That cringy.
Despite the poorly written characters, Rim of the World is a fairly straightforward science fiction adventure with mostly likable characters who have to grow and conquer their own inner demons. While none of these “inner demons” character arcs were deep or particularly surprising, they were present and that has to count for something.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie… As I said, it’s got some slightly offensive and out of date racial humor, but overall, it is a nostalgic throwback to kid adventure movies where there was both humor and palpable danger to the characters and, given Netflix’ record for snooze-worthy post-apocalyptic movies, it’s a winner in my book.
Jason Gaston 