By all accounts this movie should have been epic. It isn’t always easy to pinpoint what makes a script flounder. And what minutes there are for the plotline are sliced and diced into multiple narratives including a troubled daddy/daughter relationship between Mary Katherine and her absent-minded father (voice by Jason Sudeikis), a headstrong young soldier (voice by Josh Hutcherson) who snubs the advice of his wiser mentor (voice by Colin Farrell) and a typical comic relief duo (voices by Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari). The focus on epic battles involving arrows, swordplay and midair dogfights as well as scores of characters, allows little time for character or script development. We wanted to make a gigantic action-adventure movie.” However in an USA Today article, Director Chris Wedge is quoted as saying, “while Bill wrote a wonderful book, it is a quaint story. But just as he is about to snatch the unopened blossom from the hands of the dying queen, she tosses it to Mary Katherine (voice by Amanda Seyfried), a huge human teen who suddenly shrinks to the size of the other miniscule forest inhabitants.īased on the book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, the script pits life and growth against death and decay, both natural parts of the ecological process. To do so MAndrake must capture a magical bud that will determine the next ruler when it blooms. Mandrake (voice by Christoph Waltz), their enemy who dresses in rat pelts and badly needs dental work, leads an army of gruesome characters made up of undesirable forest creatures like mice, bats and pesky mosquitoes.Īs with all stereotypical villains who want to take over the world, he plans to destroy it first. They protect Queen Tara (voice by Beyonce Knowles), the ruler and preserver of the woodlands. The heroes in the story are leaf men, tiny soldiers who patrol the forest while riding on the backs of birds. In many ways if feels like Avatar for six-year-olds, but without the happy ending or overt environmental message. For a movie with a hyperbolic title like Epic and a tagline that reads “discover a world beyond your imagination”, this animated production is disappointingly average and unimaginative.
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