![]() ![]() Then proceeds an hour and some of teeny-tiny fight scenes between the boggans and the leafmen, as well as the budding romance between MK and erstwhile leafman Nod (Josh Hutcherson), and comic relief molluscs, Mub the slug (Aziz Ansari) and Grub the snail (Chris O'Dowd). When the boggan leader Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) succeeds in killing Tara just after she's selected a magic seed pod that will carry the spirit of her successor, or some such, the queen is able to make as her final act shrinking MK down to leaf-person size, and entrusting her as the pod's guardian until the moon reaches full that night. MK dismisses this as the ravings of a lunatic, but the thing is, he's absolutely right: there is a race of tiny people led by the magical Queen Tara (Beyoncé Knowles) and protected by the leafmen, led by the queen's childhood friend Ronin (Colin Farrell), in their ages-long battle with the boggans, the forces of decay and rot. ![]() ![]() Nor does Epic much improve, or come even close to living up to its title, once the actual plot kicks in, with its grab bag of musty narrative tropes: teenager Mary "MK" Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) has recently lost her mother to an unspecified but premature form of death, and now has to move in with her wacky obsessive scientist dad (Jason Sudeikis), who is convinced that there is a race of 2" humanoids living in the forest and directing the cycle of life of plants and animals therein. So that's three strikes, and the poor little bastard of a movie hasn't even started yet. We would not deign to use such a crummy pun in these parts, of course, but there are undoubtedly less-classy critics out there who lack our compunction. But what doesn't have more personality than Epic? Thirdly, that title does not merely invite, it openly demands for reviewers to use the headline "Epic botch", or "Epic failure", or the like. The word "epic", as a title, is also staggeringly boring and nondescript William Joyce's picture book (which gave so very little to the end result that the onscreen credits merely cite that some of the characters were "inspired" from the source material) was called The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, which is a hell of a mouthful, but it has a lot of personality. The word "epic", after all, connotes a certain gravity and scale that is almost certainly not going to be met by an animated family film. When you've gone right there, and titled your movie Epic, you've pretty much written your own death warrant. ![]()
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