Director:
Chris Wedge
Cast:
Colin Farrell
Josh Hutcherson
Amanda Seyfried
Beyonce Knowles
Rated: PG
“Epic” is another animated film from the studios that have brought you the “Ice Age” sequels and “Rio,” and like those movies, this one is stunningly mediocre.
The film follows a teenage girl named M.K. (Seyfried), who is planning to live with her father played by Jason Sudeikis. The only problem is that her father is an obsessed scientist who believes that there is a race of tiny people who live in the forest.
M.K.’s father turns out to be right though as there is a race of people called the Leafmen and they are actually at war with evil creatures called Boggans who want the forest to rot. M.K. soon finds herself sucked into this world and has to help two Leafman named Ronin (Farrell) and Nod (Hutcherson) defeat the villainous Mandrake (Waltz).
The issue with “Epic” is that it just tries to take on way to much. The film has romantic sub plots, the father daughter plot and the main plot and just doesn’t seem to know how to balance them all out. Many of the problems that the protagonists come across have been done before by other animated films and has been done better.
The movie’s story in the end just doesn’t live up to the title. There is really nothing special about the plot in terms of twists or turns or depth. It’s as if the filmmakers through a bunch of things that other animated flicks have done at a wall hoping they would stick, unfortunately they don’t.
The characters also feel a bit uninspired. The protagonist M.K. is rather average and never does anything amazing. She’s not a bad character just bland. The same could be said about the character Nod, M.K.’s love interest who is suppose to be a loose cannon. Despite that, Nod still turns out to be just plain boring, never breathing life into the film that other characters who don’t play by the rules do, like for example “Aladdin” does.
The veteran cast is disappointing. I don’t’ know if it was the writing or Colin Farrell’s deliver but the character Ronin just felt off. He is suppose to be this sort of strict, no nonsense type sometimes, however, at other points he turns out to be cracking jokes like he is a sort of fun loving type character, it just seemed like the character needed consistency. Christoph Waltz as the villain also felt under used as he played the part so simple and generic instead of really being menacing.
There were also a snail and slug played by Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd who were the comic relief characters for the movie. Yet their performances just felt old and they got tiring really fast.
By far the absolute best part of the film was the animation. The brightest spot in the entire picture is the gorgeous animation the film has going for it. There are many times that there are multiple things moving on the screen with detailed backgrounds and vibrant colors. The film is without a doubt nice to look at.
Overall, “Epic” doesn’t have much to offer. It has amazing animation but the story and characters are bland and uninteresting, being average at the very best. The film will most likely be forgotten within a few months instead of being remembered with other great animated features that were truly epic. 2 out of 5.
Matthew Liedke on Film 