Artemis Fowl: Quite foul

Artemis Fowl (2020) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for fantasy action and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.20

When fantasy goes bad, it goes really bad.

I’m not surprised Disney abandoned theatrical release for this fiasco, in favor of a debut on its Disney+ streaming service.

Things are about to get much worse: Our heroes — from left, Domovoi (Nonso Anozie),
Holly (Lara McDonnell), Mulch (Josh Gad) and Artemis (Ferdia Shaw) — react with
horror as a massive troll prepares to ... well ... eat them.

But I’m frankly astonished that director Kenneth Branagh kept his name on it, because this misbegotten adventure clearly endured post-production tampering that left major chunks of key plot details on the cutting-room floor. What remains makes no sense whatsoever.

You’ll spend half the film — if you’re foolish enough to waste time with it — muttering, “But what about…?”

Matters also aren’t helped by the fact that the title character is an arrogant, thoroughly obnoxious little snot. He’s played by first-time actor Ferdia Shaw, and boy, the inexperience shows. His so-called performance is stiff as a board, and he’s constantly upstaged by everybody else in the cast … not a good thing, for the designated star.

(Seriously, Kenneth? This was the best you could get out of the boy?)

I can’t imagine fans of Eoin Colfer’s popular young adult series liking anything about this film. Scripters Conor McPherson and Hamish McColl extracted bits and bobs from the first two books — 2001’s Artemis Fowl and 2002’s Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident — but largely fabricated their own original story; calling the result a disappointment is gross understatement.

Perhaps the biggest sin is that Artemis, Colfer’s feisty “13-year-old criminal mastermind,” has been bowdlerized — in typical Disney fashion — into a “12-year-old devil-may-care genius.” Ergo, this film’s Artemis doesn’t do any thieving; indeed, he’d accomplish very little, were it not for the far more heroic efforts of his colleagues.

He has been sanitized to the point of utter blandness.

Sad, sad, sad.

Branagh opens his film with a ludicrous media throng gathered outside Northern Ireland’s imposing Fowl Manor (actually Antrim’s Dunluce Castle), in the aftermath of some Cataclysmic Event. An imposing figure — we soon learn he’s Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) — is spirited away to a remote interrogation facility, where he reveals what occurred via flashback.

Enter Artemis, who prefers surfing to the humdrum routine of school work that doesn’t begin to tax his massive intellect. (Not that the surfing has anything to do with what follows, but it did keep the six members of this film’s “Surf Unit” occupied.)

Artemis has grown up listening to fantastical stories spun by his father, Artemis Sr. (Colin Farrell), concerning an ancient civilization that exists beneath the Earth’s surface: an amazingly advanced world of fairies, goblins, trolls, dwarves and other magical beings. Young Artemis doesn’t believe any of this, of course … until his father, a trader of rare antiques and collectibles, disappears in a mysterious helicopter accident in the South China Seas.

Turns out Dad has been kidnapped by a raspy-voiced hooded figure dubbed Opal Koboi, who threatens to kill him unless Artemis brings her an all-powerful fairy whatzit — the Aculos — from among his father’s many cataloged artifacts. Trouble is, Artemis has no idea what the Aculos even is, let alone where his father may have hidden it.

At this point, Artemis also realizes that his father hasn’t been spinning tall tales all these years, but relating his actual adventures among magical beings.

With the help of his impressively resourceful manservant, Domovoi Butler (Nonso Anozie), Artemis cooks up a scheme to trap a fairy known to have been occasionally sighted nearby. (Really? Since when?) They wind up with winged, green-garbed Holly Short (Lara McDonnell), an 84-year-old elven reconnaissance officer of the Lower Elements Police (LEPrecon).

Artemis’ scheme: to hold Holly for ransom, in order to gain the attention of 802-year-old Commander Root (Judi Dench), the shrewd, cagey LEPrecon chief. She brings along the oversized dwarf Mulch, which Artemis counted on, knowing — from his father’s journals — that dwarves are drawn to hidden treasure. If the Aculos is somewhere in the immense manor, Mulch should be able to find it.

Cue all manner of fantasy-laced action, much of it hidden from our mortal realm when Root’s centaur technical advisor, Foaly (Nikesh Patel), erects a “time freeze shield” over the manor.

Issues to ponder:

• At some earlier, unseen point, Opal Koboi kidnapped LEPrecon Lt. Briar Cudgeon (Joshua McGuire); she releases him with the promise that he’ll be her spy within Root’s forces. When next seen, now an insufferably power-hungry thorn in Root’s side, Cudgeon’s “sudden reappearance” seems a non-issue. She never missed him, while he was gone? And now that he’s back, behaving like a tin-pot tyrant, she doesn’t clap him in irons?

• Dwarves are tunnelers, channeling massive amounts of dirt from oversized mouth and then out the back end, like a giant earthworm. Once Mulch finds the Aculos, he protects it by swallowing it. But when next seen, the Aculos suddenly is in somebody else’s possession. Say what?

• Cudgeon, whose mutinous antics become ever more ridiculous, vanishes during the climax … as if McGuire, disgusted by his admittedly stupid role, simply stopped showing up on the set.

I could go on, but to what end? At an obviously too-brief 95 minutes, I suspect somebody snipped at least half an hour from this flick. I’d like to think McPherson and McColl’s script made more sense at some point, but who knows? (The notion that Unidentified Parties believed this truncated result is an improvement, beggars description.)

I’ll say this much, in the film’s defense: It looks terrific. Production designer Jim Clay and visual effects supervisor Charley Henley put a lot of work into Fowl Manor and the below-depths Haven City.

Gad has a lot of fun as Mulch, a reluctant ally with plenty of mischief in his gaze. McDonnell’s Holly Short is spunky and resourceful, and she credibly sells her character’s gradual allegiance to Artemis. Anozie, laden with spooky contact lenses, is a hoot as the thunderous Domovoi. Dench, as always, adds a welcome note of Shakespearean conviction as Root.

Tamara Smart, alas, is wasted as Domovoi’s niece Juliet: a completely useless and superfluous role.

If Disney had any thoughts of turning this into a franchise, they evaporated rapidly. Artemis Fowl, savaged by fans and critics alike, is suffering a rapid — and well-deserved — demise.