Blue Sky Studios had such potential, thanks to its first four films (“Ice Ages 1 and 2”, “Robots” and “Horton Hears A Who!”) having a great blend of humor, heart and beautiful animation. Unfortunately, in recent years Blue Sky Studios seemed to give up it’s sense of quality film-making for generic, crowd-pleasing flicks. With “Epic”, Blue Sky Studios finally has a chance to reclaim some of its glory days, with a story a bit more serious than its usual fare.
Mary Katherine, or M.K. (Amanda Seyfried) lives with her quirky father Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) in the woods. However dad’s obsession with tiny people that live in the forest creates difficulty between father and daughter. What M.K. doesn’t know is her father is right; these little people exist, and they rely on fierce warriors known as The Leafmen to protect them from the evil forces of Mandrake (Christoph Waltz). When M.K. is shrunk down and brought into their world, she’ll have to rely on Leafmen warriors Nod (Josh Hutcherson) and Ronin (Colin Farrell) to help her get home, and stop the dark forces from destroying the forest.
I’m a sucker for when animated flicks try to go darker, when it works (i.e. “How To Train Your Dragon” and the brilliant “Rango”) it creates a superb showcase for how well animation can be used to tell unique stories. Most don’t have the guts to go that weird and fantastic unfortunately, resulting in a film like “Epic”; its aspirations are much more lofty than the resulting end product.
In fact, “Epic” seems to be the first animated movie to take cues from those perfect animated films Disney created in the 90’s, with it’s use of magic, lack of edgy jokes, comic relief sidekicks and even a brief musical number calling back to those glorious motion pictures that shaped the field of animation. Unfortunately, it’s weak script calls more to mind animated flicks from other studios that tried to emulate those Disney masterpieces (think “Anastasia” or “Quest For Camelot”).
The main problem with the script is it’s overabundance of characters, most of which are mainly there to provide exposition or an extra celebrity voice. While the characters of Mub the slug and Grub the snail (delightfully voiced by Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd) are hilarious creatures, the film doesn’t give them anything useful to do in it’s big finale, resulting in the scripts most obvious example of not knowing what to do with it’s large supporting cast.
Also, the world the movie takes place in feels underdeveloped; an interesting instance of this is the mediocre continuity in the size of the Leafmen; while they’re depicted as small enough to ride hummingbirds, they’re also shown to be as big as frogs. Also, I know these Leafmen are supposedly secret from humanity due to their miniature size, which I get; but I think we’d notice if frogs (relatively large creatures) started running around with flashy clothes. This kind of inconsistency really hurts the film’s potential for optimal dramatic potential.
The voice cast is similarly scatter-shot; Aziz and Chris are superb in their roles, while Colin Farrell, Beyonce, Pitbull and Steven Tyler do great in their roles, really becoming their characters and not reminding us of their real life personalities. Since he’s the only cast member (besides Aziz and Chris) to have had prior voice over experience (as a regular character on “The Cleveland Show), Jason Sudeikis fares great as Bomba, selling both humor and emotion. And of course, Christoph Waltz is perfect as the evil Mandrake.
Blue Sky Studios may be weak in the script department, but their animation is top notch with great character designs and gorgeous environments. Also, I was impressed with how dark the film did go, depicting death, strained family life and cool action sequences, “Epic” does have many positive unique elements to it, no doubt about it.
There’s really nothing wrong with “Epic”, but it also misses a bunch of potential to become something truly great. An inconsistent script and some poor voice acting hurts the film, but it has just enough superb action, funny characters and beautiful animation to save face. Diverting, but sadly not much more, “Epic” suffices as a moderately fun time.
