The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste García

A bizarre little movie, The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste García follows the meek title character (Maria Isabel Diaz) as she receives an invitation to travel to (and live on) an alien planet, with the bulk of the narrative set in and around the abandoned high school where Celeste and her fellow travelers must await the spaceship’s arrival. First-time filmmaker Arturo Infante does a strong job of initially drawing the viewer into the deliberately-paced proceedings, as Infante, working from his own script, effectively establishes the affable, compelling central character and transforms her into a thoroughly sympathetic figure – with the promising vibe certainly enhanced by Diaz’s strong performance and an inherently intriguing premise. It’s just as apparent, however, that The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste García begins to run out of steam once the action shifts to the aforementioned abandoned high school, with the decidedly (and palpably) unpleasant environs compounded by a growing lack of momentum that’s nothing short of disastrous (ie the midsection seems to consist entirely of tedious scene after tedious scene of Celeste and her fellow inmates just hanging out and wasting time). The inclusion of a few eye-rollingly hackneyed elements (eg the equivalent of an evil prison guard) only perpetuates the progressively uninvolving atmosphere, and although the movie picks up slightly in its final stretch, The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste García closes with a somewhat anticlimactic stretch that finally does confirm its place as a fairly ambitious yet hopelessly erratic misfire.

** out of ****