Epic Movie Review
That’s Epic the movie not my most Epic movie review ever. That one has yet to be written but if I were to choose on from what I have written so far I would probably go with the Host.
So I have been at a gaming convention all weekend and have not had a chance to write anything up. I have seen this film, Fast & Furious 6, and a Bollywood zombie flick called Go Goa Gone. I opted for this one as the last review I did was huge and long and a lot of work to write and these kids films are generally easy to do. Plus I have a ton of work to do today so I’m going to get this one out fast and do the furious ones tomorrow (haw!).
So another animated film from someone called Blue Sky Studios. The only thing they have done of note to date was the entire Ice Age series (unless you consider Aunt Fanny’s Tour of Booty an unsung classic), which I have managed to miss in it’s entirety. Something about that series never drew me in. 
It just looks trite and bad campy, like the Three Stooges meets Tele Tubbies (Stooges image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). I’m sure it’s a classic but when I tell my animation fan friends I have never seen it the don’t shoot hate rays out of their eyes at me like they do if I say I have never seen every Pixar movie 14 times, so I am willing to bet I shouldn’t regret my decision.
So what do I think about Epic? Entertaining enough, with high production values. I did see it in 3D, a format that animated films is particularly (and in most cases singularly) suited for. It was polished and well crafted, if more than a little formulaic. I have seen some praise for this being the first Blue Sky production featuring a female protagonist, but honestly she was not exactly a paragon of feminine strength. She spent most of the time either being rescued by assorted male characters or carrying around a fragile seed pod in a pretty clear allegory to pregnancy. I suspect if they could have found a plot device to have her barefoot in a kitchen there wouldn’t have been much internal debate among the writers.
As is my policy I will not be doing my usual stars/black holes. It is a waste on kids films IMO. I judge these things by how much fun the kids in the audience seem to be having and for the most part it was a good time (also judging by the number of crying babies there were a number of kids who never saw more than a lot of green blurs. Do theaters make 3D glasses for infants? Do we really know what kind of brain damage 3D potentially could be doing to infants? Most parents suck). They all seemed to be laughing to a certain extent (although not as much as a lot of other kids films) and there were cute creatures to keep them entertained (the hand of the merchandising arm was pretty visible at a lot of points).
That’s not to say there weren’t issues here. The main one seems to be the formulaic nature of the story, and the focus on kids humor while leaving the adults suffering. Unlike other recent bad kids movies like Escape from Planet Earth I can’t say this film wasn’t written with adults in mind. There were some very adult concepts addressed here such as dysfunctional families, child emancipation, and the death of parents and/or kids. The problem is these adult concepts were dead boring and not at all funny or remotely entertaining. Some of them were even a bummer. It was like watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood cut together with Philadelphia.
The other issue I had with this film was the animation of the human (or human-like) characters. I won’t say the animators went to school in the uncanny valley, but they definitely went to summer camp there. This is a problem endemic to CGI animation films with delusions of grandeur. The characters look almost human enough to be actual actors but are still off enough to make them kind of hard to look at. The overall effect is like watching a cut scene from a decent video game. Ironically the target audience (kids) probably couldn’t care less about the humans looking like humans, and other, better films generally don’t mess around with it.
I’d like to give one more criticism to this film and that is the overwhelming need the studio feels to hire big name actors and celebrities to do the voice over work. Does the studio really think that rabid fans of Beyonce, Colin Ferrell, or Josh Hutchinson are going to come see this film in order to hear the melodious sound of their voices? They are effectively hiring amateurs to do the voice over work (qualified actors and performers all, but none of them are known for their animation work) with the net effect of the voices never quite seeming to match the character on the screen. You see a fairy queen but all you hear is Beyonce. Is Billy West really that hard to hire?
Anyway, an abbreviated story synapses (hey, I’ve got things to do today). A girl with the awkward to say name of Mary Katherine (try it. It does not roll off the tongue. Also whoever submitted this film to IMDB made the really bad choice of listing all (and I mean ALL) of the voice actors alphabetically, making correctly identifying who did what or even what the names of all the characters are a serious chore so I am going to blow it off) is coming home to visit her dad after the implied death of her mother, who had also seperated from him. The reason for the seperation and possible future estrangement from his daughter is her fathers obsession with finding tiny little humans (or fairies) who live in the forest. Turns out they are real, and are responsible for keeping nature and rot in balance.
The queen (Beyonce) is due to pick out a new heir in the form of a seed pod. While doing so the Boggans (the rot creatures? Not sure what they were about) attack under the lead of their king and try to steal the pod. During the fight the King of the Boggans son is killed, as is the Queen of the …? (Not really sure what they were supposed to be called. Also how did this film keep a G rating exactly?). MK (her preferred shortening. Good choice) happens upon the dying queen and gets shrunk down in order to guard the seed pod. At that point she is joined by Ronin (Collin Ferrel) and some rejected kid named Nub (Josh Hutchinson), whose father was Ronin’s friend and was killed by Boggans (G rating again). They go on a quest to see some dude who has all the forest knowledge and are joined by a slug and a snail, who are the films comic relief (rather effective, actually, although if you feel your kids movie is in need of active comic relief perhaps you need to rethink the base concept).
At that point it’s a forest dungeon crawl. The Boggans get the pod. The others have to sneak in and save it. The king wants to have the spirit of the queen reborn as a something evil so he can corrupt the forest. I don’t want to spoil this film for you, but in a shocking surprise good triumphs over evil.
So, decent for your rug rats. They will be entertained. I don’t know about 3D for kids (or adults, for that matter. I say there is a good chance that 20 years from now we look back on 3D like we now look back on thalidomide). If you can get your neighbor to take the whole raft of kids I’d say go for it. If you are stuck with the chore this might be a chance to play with your Google Glass. Bathroom break? Any of the scenes involving MK’s father are the equivalent of packing peanuts in a shipment of clothing. Feel free to skip out then.
Thanks for reading. Fast and Furious tomorrow, plus I still need to see Hangover 3. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Post comments here if you like regarding this film or my review. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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