The Last Mimzy, in a nutshell: A mysterious and powerful visitor from far away enters the lives of young siblings, changing their lives forever – drawing some unwanted (and ill-timed) attention from government agents. Can the children get the visitor home before its time is up?

Raise your hand that sounds familiar. It should: It’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The makers of The Last Mimzy might prefer that you not notice that, and since their target audience is the 10-and-under set, they may just get their wish. But for the rest of the audience, the similarities are hard to ignore. Fortunately, the filmmakers (including director Bob Shaye, founder and co-CEO of New Line Cinema) tell the story with enough skill to make you forget the… let’s be generous and call it an homage.

The film is impeccably cast, and each actor gives a performance so natural that you almost forget you’re watching a story about a stuffed animal from the future. Noah and Emma (newcomers Chris O’Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) convincingly portray the compelling little moppets who adopt the aforementioned Mimzy (a stuffed rabbit that is – of course – more than it first seems), and parents David and Jo (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson, of Oscar and Nip/Tuck fame) manage to display the proper balance of concern and bewilderment that seeing one’s children become pawns of said rabbit. Rainn Wilson, Dwight of NBC’s The Office, plays an oddball science teacher plagued by indecipherable dreams. It is he and his adorable fiancée (played by Crossing Jordan’s Kathryn Hahn) who first recognize the amazing changes in the children.

The film’s message seems to be that kids have a lot of potential that adults simply can’t reclaim. The children open themselves to Mimzy’s mission, and wind up pointing the way to a new way of living for everyone. Of course, had Mimzy’s creators instead invented a, I don’t know, magical BMW 325i, perhaps adults might be a bit more receptive. But they chose a bunny, so there you are.

Indeed, the bunny may be the film’s greatest weakness. It’s no E.T. It’s not even Teddy Ruxpin. Mimzy does little more than squawk and squeak a bit when Emma’s near it. You’d think that a hyper-advanced culture that can send stuffed animals into the past could at least give the thing an audible speaking voice. People, we had the technology in 1985: All you need to do is stick a cassette in the bear’s back and press play. Look, if your goal is obtaining uncontaminated DNA from the past, at least have the foresight to send back intelligible instructions.

Alas, applying logic to children’s movies is a bit like cutting open a frog to figure out how it works: Pretty soon, you’re going to have a non-working frog. The Last Mimzy – the rabbit and the film – succeeds in spite of the gaping logic holes, largely because there’s no time to stop and ponder the silliness of it all. Shaye and his ensemble keep the action moving quickly right up until Elliot and E.T. phone ho– I mean Emma and Noah build their trans-dimensional bridge. Only after the film was done can you take a breath and ponder whether a society that depends on a mute bunny rabbit scoring some kiddie DNA really deserves to survive.

For their part, the kids in the theater with me didn’t have any problem buying it. Maybe we could learn something from that.

(One final thought: I have to admit that my sole interest in seeing this film was because it featured a new song by Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters. The song, “Hello (I Love You),” isn’t bad. It’s no “Comfortably Numb,” but it ain’t bad.)

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