If you go down to the woods today...
Film Review: Epic (PG)
Running time 102 minutes
Rating:***
Half the fun of going to see a supposedly children’s ‘cartoon’ film such as Epic is trying to identify which great filmstar has taken the poisoned chalice in order to provide the voice for an animated character.
To be deterred by such a prospect risks missing a film that some adults, satiated on blood, gore, endless special effects and dumb dialogue, might actually enjoy.
While such productions might well have been out of the cutesy-animal or harmless-villain school of animation in the past, Aardman, Dreamworks, and yes, even Disney, have put more grit in their cartoons in recent years.
The result is that having found a good story – tiny green protectors in fight to save forest from nasty tree killer – Twentieth Century Fox Animation finds a good director in the shape of Chris Wedge (Ice Age), and some excellent voices and so has created 102 minutes of super fun adults should not be embarrassed to go and see.
The story perhaps needs a little expansion, although most seven-year-olds in the cinema I attended last week grasped the narrative without a blink. Teenager MK (Amanda Seyfried) returns to her dad’s house to live with him after the death of her mother, but dad (Jason Sudeikis) is a mad scientist convinced there are tiny people (called Leafmen) in the forest.
MK goes out into the forest and becomes caught up in a drama when the queen of the forest (Beyoncé) is killed by baddies called Boggans who, under their leader Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) wants to turn the forest into a wasteland.
Head Leafman Ronin (Colin Farrell), and trainee Leafman Nod (Josh Hutcherson), all join up to try and save the forest from destruction by ensuring the succession to the throne.
The animation, as you would expect these days, is superb, with plenty of colour, depth of image and realistic-looking faces. Director Wedge introduces the razor sharp wit of Ice Age to the party and MK has just enough teenage angst to make it believable.
There’s some cracking music, one or two not-so-subtle messages about caring for the natural world around us, and solid fairytale concepts that didn’t do the brothers Grimm any harm.
All in all, a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, listening to first the children enjoying themselves, then the adults remembering that animation, as well as being the first method of watching a moving image, has also produced some world-beating entertainment for them too.
