Three stars. Rating: PG, and needlessly, for "scary images" and mildly rude language
By Derrick Bang
This is a gorgeously produced
animated fantasy, with opulent visuals and a color palette that cleverly
reflects the story beats; I’d expect no less from director Chris Wedge and his
Blue Sky Studios, the folks who brought us the Ice Age series.
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| M.K. (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), suddenly responsible for the safety of a pod that will help preserve the surrounding forest, fends off hilariously unlikely romantic overtures from Mub (Aziz Ansari), a slug who fancies himself quite the chick magnet. |
The impressive voice talent is
well cast, with our primary characters granted personality and depth by Colin
Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Chris O’Dowd, Beyoncé and
particularly Christoph Waltz, who makes a grand villain.
The dialogue is droll and snarky,
with quite a few laughs coming from O’Dowd.
And yet...
Narratively, Epic is curiously flat and uninvolving: far less than the sum of
parts that should have worked better than they do. The premise is contrived and
scattershot, with bits begged, borrowed or stolen from other, superior fantasy
sagas. Waltz’s scenery-chewing malevolence notwithstanding, there’s never a
sense of genuine peril: no feeling that our heroes are in any real danger, or
that they’ll fail to save the day in the manner foretold in the first act.
The storyline is based loosely on
The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs,
one of imaginative author/illustrator William Joyce’s many delectable
children’s books. Actually, “loosely” still overstates the case; 20th Century
Fox has gone out of its way to distance this film from Joyce’s book.
Frankly, all concerned might have
done better to follow Joyce’s template more closely, since this script —
credited to Tom J. Astle, Matt Ember, James V. Hart and Daniel Shere — is a
derivative, disorganized mess. Characters too frequently seem to have been
granted screen time — and dialogue — based on the popularity of the star
providing the voice, as opposed to reasons relating to plot continuity.
That’s a bass-ackwards approach
to filmmaking, and the awkward results are plain.
