There's something wronnnnng here, something very, very wronnnnng. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together kind of wrong.

Bill Murray isn't funny anymore.

He isn't even trying, not when it comes to choosing scripts and often not when chosen scripts offer opportunities for laughter. And Murray isn't doing serious movies like Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers that mined his comedic reputation for heartbreaking wistfulness because he wasn't wisecracking, or if he did it was brief, contrasting comic relief. We could sense that those characters wanted, even needed to laugh but couldn't.

Now we know how those characters felt.

Murray apparently intends now to be funny only in minute doses (his Get Smart cameo was fleeting fun) or not at all, in movies nobody is honestly expected to see (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Lost City, The Darjeeling Limited).

City of Ember -- possibly the most depressing kiddie adventure ever -- is the latest Murray miscalculation. Somber to a fault, with an allegorical political/religious subtext that will sail over the heads of children suckered in by the PG rating. Suddenly, Murray sleeptalking through two Garfield movies as the voice of a cartoon cat looks pretty good.

Murray is miscast as the mayor of Ember, an underground city created centuries earlier when the above-ground world ended. For reasons some viewers will think are unclear -- and those who get it will shrug and think "so what?" -- the mayor doesn't want Ember to literally pull itself out of a catastrophic hole. It's a nothing role that any middle-aged actor gone to seed would wring for menacing mirth. Murray looks bloated and bored, only slightly more interested that cameras are rolling than he was in Charlie's Angels.

You know Murray doesn't care about his reputation when he reprises his getting-slimed scream from Ghostbusters in this mess, this time when a gigantic mole with French tickler lips rushes into his face.

This is precisely the kind of material that the old Murray would mock, practically daring producers not to pay him due to insubordination. The guy whose sarcastic bluster we'd wind up quoting for years. The Murray who could make you buy a ticket simply because he was in the preview trailer. Now that has become a red flag for moviegoers.