Epic is the latest colourful animation from Blue Sky Studios, the folks behind similarly vibrant fare as Rio, Robots and the phenomenally successful Ice Age franchise. But what it boasts in lively visuals it lacks in originality and inventiveness, both in its narrative framework and its whizz-bang action sequences. It all makes for a brightly-coloured sense of déjà vu.
Based on the children’s book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, the story centres on a teenage girl named M.K. (Amanda Seyfried) who moves into the secluded forest home of her madcap professor father (Jason Sudeikis). He is obsessed with finding and studying a group of tiny soldiers he believes live in the forest with the use of surveillance cameras he has planted all over the place.
One day while out looking for the family dog Ozzie, M.K. finds herself mysteriously shrunken as she enters the perilous world of the miniature warriors known as the “Leaf Men.” She must then help them defeat an evil force who threatens to overtake the forest and destroy their way of life.
Epic never quite finds its feet as any sort of unique or particularly exciting piece of animation in its own right, misjudging the balance between silly humour and grand action, too often bringing to mind other similar animated and live-action works from the same studio and beyond. Exploring tiny worlds is not exactly a new thing and the film only seeks to evoke everything from The Borrowers and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to FernGully and A Bug’s Life, to name but a few. That hodgepodge approach would be fine if the kid-friendly action sequences were anything more than mildly entertaining (it would be kind even to call them that) or if the characters weren’t so pedestrian.
Voice work from the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson and Colin Farrell are either generic or wildly out-of-place – only Christoph Waltz as the appropriately menacing baddie truly works – and characters range from the dull (M.K., for example) to the clichéd (her wacky yet caring father) to the frankly irritating; Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd as a slug and snail, respectively, are only there to deliver cheap and broad laughs that frequently fall flat.
For its target audience of the 8 and under crowd, Epic is sufficiently diverting stuff but it fades into a fog of similar films that play it safe with its characters, jokes and story. Only the gorgeous visuals and well-realized mini world make it worth a casual look but in the end it’s overly familiar, uninspiring fare. Epic? Far from it.
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