Confusion joins boredom in 'Aeon Flux'

Let's not mince words about Charlize Theron's trip, fall and go boom futuristic action film "Aeon Flux": It's as enjoyable as acid reflux.

Paramount Pictures and MTV Films blatantly tried to keep the movie, which debuted Friday, away from critics to prevent opening-day reviews. For good reason. Hollywood suits didn't want anyone to know how utterly boring the movie is. Which it utterly is.

Paramount Pictures 'Aeon Flux' D The verdict: Charlize Theron? Pretty. Her action film? Pretty bad. Director: Karyn Kusama Starring: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo Run time: 93 minutes Release date: Dec. 2, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and sexual content. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Aeon Flux'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Somehow, director Karyn Kusama ("Girlfight") has taken the worst elements of "The Phantom Menace" (the incessant monotone verbiage) and "Dune" (the visual space garbage) and infused it into a sci-fi film as confusing as it is uninteresting.

But let's at least say something nice: "Aeon Flux" is nowhere near as bad as John Travolta's stupendous flop "Battlefield Earth."

"Flux" is based on the comic (there was also a 1995 animated TV series) and stars Oscar-winner Theron in the title role as a super-duper, often barely clad rebel agent way off in the future after a virus has killed 99 percent of the world's population.

Everybody who remains on Earth — 5 million souls — is holed up in the beautiful, walled-in city of Bregna. They're led by a think-tank of stone-faced bores, and, for some mysterious reason, people are mysteriously vanishing.

Enter the rebel underground, led by a god-like, wide-eyed Francis McDormand, whose witchy orange locks sprout from her head like she's a futuristic bride of Frankenstein. She sends Aeon into the heart of the think tank to assassinate Bregna's leader Trevor Goodchild, played with stone-faced dullness by Marton Csokas.

Enough of the plot, which only gets more convoluted.

Sophie Okonedo shows up as a fellow rebel with a new set of hands for feet and an old set of hands for hands.

There's a lot of jumping, kicking and pointless acrobatics. A lot of gunfire and hocus-pocus scene shifting. And a heck of a lot of proof that Theron has disgarded every bit of that old "Monster" body and is back to her perfect shape, perfect skin, perfect lips and perfect perfection.

Some of her costumes (is that what you call two small patches of cloth and a thin connecting thread?) are watchable. Sometimes her hair is plastered to her head; sometimes not. Oh, and Aeon can catch a fly between her right-eye eyelashes. How's that for flash?

For reasons unknown, there are always extras walking around, carrying colored Chinese-style umbrellas when it's not raining.

Anyway, "Aeon Flux" may be all wet, but we do learn a few things:

1) Really good sleuths wear white in the darkest of night (the better for a movie audience to observe them sleuthing, one would guess).

2) There is and will always be a convenient subway train to hop on and avoid gun-toting police.

3) In the fashion-forward future, we will become a race of extremely dull people.

You heard it here first: Boredom will be the new black.