I know it’s hardly the thing to consider taking in a movie during Holy Week, but if by any chance you can find the time, you might want to find out if “The Last Mimzy” is playing near you, because I suspect it won’t be in theaters long. I mean, here’s a movie about children who come across something unexpected and almost magical, and it manages to be neither cutesy-preachy (see also “E.T.”) nor edgy-depressing (see also “The Shining”). It has something to say, but also leaves things unsaid. It posits some bad times ahead for humanity, but ends with a blissful ray of hope.

Can’t imagine what they were thinking — hardly the stuff of box office bonanzas. And reviewers like this one thought it was insipid, so maybe I’m just a doof for liking it. But anyway, it’s my blog, so I’m saying I wish there were more movies like this being made now.

Some quick words on what it’s about: Two children find an odd box on the seashore by their family’s vacation home. Noah, an underachieving 10-year-old (is there any other kind?) and Emma, his gifted younger sister, find that the box contains an odd assortment of objects — black rocks, a blue blob, a seashell full of gunk, a thing like a glowing circuit board … and a cuddly little stuffed rabbit whose name — as it tells Emma — is Mimzy.

Mimzy can talk? Well, only in a sort of whirring purr that Emma can understand but no one else can. And it begins to be apparent that all the objects have unique properties and can impart special talents to the children. Emma and Noah have the childlike sense to realize right away that this is something to keep secret, but the “toys” and the abilities they give are a little hard to keep under wraps. And the plot thickens when Mimzy tells Emma that the box and all its contents were sent back from the future and that there’s a vitally important mission connected with them. The exact nature of the mission only unfolds over time (as you’d expect) but involve an attempt by scientists to recapture lost humanity.

The film might have gone wrong in many different ways, but I felt like it dodged a lot of bullets. The suburban family wasn’t dysfunctional (thank heaven for small mercies — I didn’t think there was anyone making movies that could resist depicting suburbanites as monsters and maniacs), the children weren’t smarmy or smart-alecky and others who get drawn in — from an ex-hippie science teacher to a Homeland Security bigwig — are lightly drawn characters that don’t cross over into caricatures. It has good special effects, but it doesn’t rely on them to sell its story. It has children in it, but it’s not the mealy insubstantial fare of a family movie. Writers managed a light touch, wisely staying away from the kind of dark humor that undermines so many movies these days.

As for the message … well, there’s an aspect of it that’s worth a blog post all its own, but in the places where I disagreed with their outlook I could at least give them the respect that they gave their audience. That, too, is in all-too-short supply these days.

P.S. — Rainn Wilson plays the science teacher, and it’s good to see him looking somewhat normal for a change. He did such a very good job playing repressed oddball Arthur Martin on “Six Feet Under” and quintessential brown-noser Dwight Schrute on “The Office” that you wouldn’t have believed he could have appeared even halfway normal.