A lot of the problems with the film have to do with its characters and their separate story arcs, and though there are a few good ones, there are a good number of ones that do not actually work or not explored enough. Amanda Seyfried's character, M.K., is pretty decent. She's likable, the audience can relate to the conflicts she's going through such as losing her mom and her troubled relationship with her father. She is also determined, kind, and acts like a normal teenage girl. She actually serves a lot to the story and she contributes. Plus Amanda Seyfried does a decent job in the role. Nod can be added to the list as one of the most obnoxious characters in the film. He hardly contributes anything, he is a whiny little show off, he does not take his duties seriously, he just stands there trying to act cool, suave, and flirting with M.K.. Even the two's so called "relationship" is not all that fleshed out and given time to develop. He just stands there being a jerk, saying unfunny one-liners, and pretending to be this fake Disney prince with his good looks and hair, and MAN do I want to punch this guy square in the face! Colin Farrell plays Ronin, who like M.K. is another one of the few good characters. He's the type of leader who you would follow in a heartbeat. He has the job covered, he is a good fighter, he is loyal to his people and the colony where he comes from, on top of that he has a decent rivalry with the film's villain, Mandrake. And speaking of the villain, here is an almost decent character. He has an original as well as intimidating appearance, he's played by Christoph Waltz, who at first the voice was kind of distracting as well as I myself thought maybe this was not the right actor for the role. But he did grow on me and it seemed that Waltz was enjoying the performance. And when I mean an almost decent character, I mean this could have been a great villain but unfortunately, like a lot of the great things the film could have offered, there's nothing more to it. For example, his motivation is very weak and not thought about that much. In the beginning something big happens to somebody close to Mandrake because of Ronin, which makes him really torn up about it. But yet it never is brought up again. Maybe one other time but that was it! Wouldn't this tragedy be great to fuel anger within the villain, and making his motivation sort of make sense and relatable. Also that way he can have a stronger rivalry with Ronin, because it turns out that Mandrake also did something to someone that was really close to Ronin. That instead he is almost dumbed down to being evil for the sake of being evil. There is Queen Tara, the ruler of the forest (voiced by Beyonce Knowles), who I have to admit was kind of grating at first because she seemed way too optimistic and positive despite the dangers and troubles surrounding her. But later on you do realize her motivations and why she is the way she is. She also supposedly has this "relationship" if you will, with Ronin, that really is not explained enough and it is just left there hanging without anyone referencing again. Again, it is one of those character arcs that could have really helped the story and give it depth, but instead other useless elements are used to substitute for it. But what was REALLY distracting of the character is that she looks WAY too much like Tiana from Disney's The Princess and the Frog! To those who have seen Epic, doesn't she? I know I am harping on this too much but its really distracting! Then we got my absolute least favorite characters in the entire film, Mub the Slug (voiced by Aziz Ansari) and Grub the Snail (voiced by Chris O'Dowd). Let me rephrase that, it's Mub that I want to stab in the eye with a salad fork, Grub's only crime is that he's completely forgettable. Honestly, I do not remember a thing about that character, the only thing that I can remember was this dumb running gag of him mentioning his dream of being a Leaf Man, but that joke grows old pretty fast. Mub is one of the most annoying comic reliefs put to film. All this character does is act "gangsta", spew pop culture references, and shout out modern day slang, and make ugly faces with his body. First of all, HOW IN THE HELL DOES A SNAIL LIVING IN A MYSTICAL MAGICAL FOREST, KNOW ALL THIS STUFF! I know what you're thinking, Disney's Aladdin had a genie that made jokes based off of modern day pop culture references, you seem to be okay with that? Well here's the difference, Robin Williams' Genie character from Aladdin, was supposed to be a wacky and out of this world character, and through the comedic writing and probably Williams' best performance, it worked. But here it makes NO sense whatsoever! We have Jason Sudekis as M.K.'s father Professor Bomba, who when you really get down to it, is kind of a jerk. I know they are trying to play him off as this awkward and kooky scientist, but to be honest he's kind of disgustingly unlikable. I mean it's mentioned that he had a divorce with his wife because he was too much into his work, which is discovering the Leaf Men. It's a cliche to have a man separated from his wife simply becaus ehe puts work before family, but here's the thing, the film makes it seem like finding these Leaf Man are no problem at all. I mean these Leaf Men hardly ever cover their tracks, and if they do try, their horrible at it. Meaning these things are not that hard to find, anybody could find them actually. Heck M.K. just accidentally stumbled across them, and she did not have to use any of that stupid gear her father uses to try to find them. Also, M.K.'s mom died, which brings up the question, where the hell was this guy when this happened? Okay, I could probably understand if no one called him or invited him to the funeral, BUT he knew M.K. was coming to live with him, MEANING he knew what happened! And what does he do? Acts like a jackass, excuse my french but that's the only suitable word I can come up with, and continues with his stupid work and acts like a goofball. Oh he's such a goof, har har har, what a character, despite the fact that he abandoned his only daughter and wife, who is now dead, meaning the daughter has to come live with him, but he still acts like a such a character. Hardy har har, it totally makes me forget the fact that this deadbeat is taking in no consideration for his daughter's mental scars and the death of his ex-wife. HAH! Steven Tyler also plays this character, a caterpillar named Nim Galuu, who is kind of weird at first but I have to admit he does sort of grow on you. I honestly thought the character was going to dread was this "mafia" toad named Bufo, who believe it or not is voiced by pop artist Pitbull. Now anyone who knows my taste in music knows I absolutely DESPISE Pitbull. Not him personally, just his music. So I was dreading his acting talents. But surprisingly he was one of the most enjoyable characters in the entire film. Yeah, I actually kind of liked him. He had this coolness to him, this "don't mess with me" attitude which was much more subtle and classy than that piece of crud Mub. And again honestly, it was Pitbull's performance that made me like the character a lot. Okay so his acting was not Orson Welles or Gregory Peck, but he seemed to be really in that role and having fun with it. The only downside, he's barely in just two scenes in the entire film. They chose a annoying, loud-mouthed, disgusting piece of turd slug over a cool, awesome, and smooth character. SHOOT ME!
The one thing that I can praise this film highly for is the animation! The animation is beautiful! I used to have this prejudice against CGI animated films, despite my loves for Pixar films like Toy Story, The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo, as I always preferred traditionally hand drawn films, but I swear CG animation is just getting better and better the more they are made, despite the quality of the film's story and characters. The animation in this film just flows. All the bright colors stand out and it makes the world this film is set in very beautiful and huge. I also saw this film in 3D, and it really does help the animation, for a lack of better term, pop out.
Like a good chunk of the characters, the film does not have a lot going for it with its story. It has good elements, but again not enough is done with it to be an advantage for the film to make it better. Because it pretty much the same kind of story like those shown in Ferngully and Avatar, the rainforest is God and anything not the rainforest is the Devil. It's one of those again, and we've seen it a million times. But I will argue that there is sort of a difference. You see instead of fighting the usual humans or "the ignorant conservative white man" enemy, this time they are fighting an enemy that lives within their realms and their world. THIS I like, this is something different. Though they still are a metaphor for pollution, its nice to be interested on who these villains are and why is there a tense conflict between our heroes, the Leaf Men, and these villains. The downside, none of that is really dived that deep into. It's just the bad guys just wanting to be bad guys and wreck the forest for no specific reason. They do not explain their hatred for the forest and why they do these villainous acts, they just want to be bad. Maybe the writers just wanted to make a simple to follow story that children can be okay with, without too many complicated story elements and characters but c'mon, when there's a scene that seems to be going somewhere, do we really need to be interrupted by a stupid joke, pop culture reference, or I don't know THAT SLIMY ANNOYING TURD MUB! That's the film's problem, it has potential to be a good film or even great, but it gets to sidetracked, too unfocused, and too distracted by other elements that they think will keep the children audience paying attention, and they fail miserably. In fact this film is not even horrible, at most it's average. That seems about the right word to sum up this film, just average. Not good nor bad, just average. Mediocre, maybe, but at the most average. So if you ask me if Epic was worth the price ticket, my response is simply "Eh".
GRADE: AP
P.S. WHY IS THIS MOVIE NAMED "EPIC" ?
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