Oh man, I remember being this age. Heck, I remember being that kid – completely helpless in some ways yet a world-beater in others. Over the years, this film has gone by names such as The Goonies, Escape to Witch Mountain, and Free Willy. It’s all about empowerment; telling a kid he has the ability to make a difference even when he can’t ride a bicycle. This kind of film used to be Disney’s bread-and-butter until it figured out how people go gaga for singing cartoon characters. In the present, so many films are about emotional strength and vanquishing evil, but so few are about genuine empowerment; there’s a difference and there ought to be more Rim of the Worlds.
Aliens have invaded. Oh, and they haven’t just invaded. They trashed the place, trashed the place, trashed the place, and moved on like team Trump stiffing a convention center and leaving COVID in its wake. Is there a body count? You betcha, but that’s neither the headline, nor the story. Four random kids at camp have survived, errantly, randomly, unwittingly, but survived nonetheless, and now they have to save humanity. Camp has changed since I was a kid.
I’m not wild about the stereotypes. The surviving four were almost certainly drawn to reflect the greatest amount of diversity possible. Not only do they represent four distinct ethnicities, they can also be classified as the nerd’s nerd (Jack Gore), the delinquent (Alessio Scalzotto), the big-mouthed jerk (Benjamin Flores Jr.), and the question mark (Miya Cech). They all went to camp Rim of the World, and they all happened to not be around when aliens blew up the camp site.
What they were around to see, however, was a spacecraft crash landing in the woods. The lander came with two key elements: 1) a dying astronaut with a plea to deliver 
an alien-destroying key to an address seventy miles away and 2) a lander-destroying alien, complete with its own campground-destroying alien dog. That relationship is a story unto itself. The alien is amorphous, large, grey, ugly and behaves like living claymation: need another limb? I’ll just grow one. What’s that lump on my back? Oh, my dog. Sic ‘em, Sirius. And even though the alien is an evil parasite, you just know it has a John Wick thing going with the dog, right?
So here’s your movie – four mismatched preteens gotta get a key seventy miles from them through destroyed cities while being pursued by a Ray Harryhausen nightmare. And it they aren’t successful, the world ends. No pressure. There’s also a bit of Breakfast Club thing going on where the kids of different backgrounds all –in a way- have similar strengths and weaknesses. Depending on how you look at it, every kid is the nerd, the jerk, the delinquent, the question mark. But they all gotta work together to save the Earth. The thing I LOVE about this film is it is a classic throwback to my youth – while the action is totally sci-fi, the sitch is just realistic enough to encourage empowerment instead of pure fantasy dismissal. There are going to be a lot of current tweens and pre-teens who see Rim of the World the same way my generation sees The Goonies. Is that a good thing? Only you can decide.
Four kids sent for nature and mirth
Find catastrophe has given birth
Can they preserve humanity
From the brink of insanity?
And is there a merit badge for saving the planet?
Rated TV-14, 98 Minutes
Director: McG
Writer: Zack Stentz
Genre: Saving the world, dude! And maybe getting the girl, too
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your pre-teen nerd child
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anyone associated with planetary defense
