Epic

Film Review by Josh Slater-Williams | 21 May 2013
Film title: Epic
Director: Chris Wedge
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Christoph Waltz, Jason Sudeikis, Beyoncé Knowles, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Steven Tyler, Pitbull
Release date: 22 May
Certificate: U

Epic feels like a deliberate throwback to children’s adventure films of the 80s and 90s. And not necessarily the good ones – it’s plagued by a lot of similarities to 1992 eco-bore FernGully. What director Chris Wedge’s film does offer, however, is generally well-executed and engaging enough to make it a pleasant diversion.

It concerns teenager Mary (Seyfried) who, following the death of her mother, moves in with her estranged scientist father (Sudeikis), a man obsessed with the idea that a tiny race of people live in the nearby woodland. Sure enough he’s right. Mary finds herself shrunk down to their size and joining a band of miniscule folk, including two 'leaf men' warriors (Farrell and Hutcherson), to fight an evil trying to destroy their forest.

Exploring tiny worlds within our own is no novel idea in animation but, excluding Studio Ghibli’s The Borrowers adaptation Arrietty, Epic is perhaps the most impressively rendered cinematic realisation of this concept, with some pleasingly inventive touches for visualising our protagonists’ world.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said about Epic’s antagonists, The Boggan. Their history and the realm they inhabit lacks clarification, while villain Mandrake (a surprisingly flat Waltz) is a generically irredeemable and unambiguous foe with often nonsensical schemes. For all the details squeezed into the visuals, the root of Epic’s conflict makes it feel quite empty. [Josh Slater-Williams]

http://www.epicthemovie.com