Epic
Or not so Epic...
What it's about
During a visit
with her eccentric father, teenager Mary Katherine (MK) suddenly
finds herself entangled in a war between the fairy-like forest people
and the evil forces of the Rot as the forest people's dying queen
shrinks MK down to their size and charges her with protecting and
delivering the birth pod of a new queen to her people and stopping
the Rot from taking over the forest.
What we thought
Much like The
Croods before it, Epic was done no favours by a tremendously generic
and unpromising trailer but with the added disadvantage of a title
that is both grandiose and entirely non-descriptive. Unlike The
Croods though, which turned out to be one of the year's most pleasant
surprises, Epic never quite manages to transcend its trailer or live
up to its title.
That's not to say
that latest animated kids feature by the team behind the Ice Age
films and Rio is without its pleasures or that it won't work, in the
short term at least, with younger audiences but perhaps a more
fitting title would have been “Middling” or, more descriptively,
“Just Another Animated Movie.”
Epic's basic plot
may not in fact be “epic” and it's certainly not original as it
plays out like a mixture of Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Avatar/
Pocahontas/ FernGully and the latest incarnation of DC's Swamp Thing
comics, but it is adequate enough and is certainly far better than
the thread-bare plots of the Ice Age films. If there is one stand-out
thing about the film though, it's that it has as its main character a
strong, independent and likeable teenage girl (voiced by Amanda
Seyfried) that not only makes the film equally fitting for girls as
it is for boys, but gives little girls a genuinely worthwhile role
model in the form of Mary Katherine.
Sadly, aside for
some beautiful animation and a fairly funny talking snail voiced by
the increasingly awesome Chris O'Dowd, there is little else that is
true noteworthy about Epic. The basic plot may be OK but the way it
unfolds isn't so much predictable – though it certainly is that as
well – as it is plodding and unevenly paced. It's only just over
100 minutes but it actually feels quite a bit longer.
It may also
advertise itself as a comedic action-adventure but is disappoints at
all three. As an action adventure movie it's a very far cry from
something like How To Train Your Dragon or even The Croods and most
of the comedy falls pretty flat with only the afore mentioned snail
providing any half way decent laughs.
The biggest
problem with the film though, and it is here that I think it's
destined to be forgotten by its target audiences before it even hits
DVD and Blu-Ray, is that its characters are so woefully
underdeveloped and unmemorable. Mary Katherine is, as I mentioned,
the clear exception to this but, again aside for that blasted talking
snail, is given next to nothing to work against. Her dad is a
by-the-numbers absent minded genius and the various forest folk fit
sink immediately into increasingly banal, preconfigured archetypes
(benevolent queen, stern soldier, slightly rebellious but good
hearted love interest, oafish comic relief). Most damningly, the main
villain is incredibly bland, making no use whatsoever of Christoph
Waltz's fantastic ability to be both menacing and incredibly funny at
the same time.
With school
holidays rapidly approaching and without much else on at cinemas for
young kids, Epic is ultimately a perfectly okay choice for a day at
the movies with your kids but just because it's an acceptable way to
kill two hours doesn't change the fact that, aside for its lovely
animation, it simply doesn't hold a candle to the kind of fare that
Pixar and Dreamworks tend to pump out on a regular basis.
Comments
Post a Comment