If you’re going to call a movie “Epic,” it better be an
exceptional one. Unfortunately, this one isn’t….epic, that is. The lesson that
life is ‘many leaves connected to one tree’ is sprinkled throughout like an
after thought though it can provide discussion fodder for the very young. And
then there’s a three-legged, one-eyed old pug dog and you wonder why? The
screenplay, which is credited to about a half-dozen writers and was adapted
from a children’s book, is slow and uneven, with no surprises and little
suspense, but the animation is adequate and the voice acting fine. It’s just
that everything is so underwhelming that it’s hard to get excited.
The story suggests that the forests of the world are
inhabited not only by birds, small mammals, and bugs, but also by two-inch tall
human-like beings who are locked in an unending battle between life and decay.
The ‘good guys’ are led by Queen Tara (Beyonce Knowles), her captain of the
guard, Ronin (Colin Farrell) and the brash youngster Nod (Josh Hutcherson). The
‘bad guys’ are headed by the malevolent Mandrake (Christoph Waltz), whose
life’s ambition is to strip away all the green from the forest. Meanwhile,
there are a couple of normal sized humans who enter the story: teenager Mary
Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) and her bumbling naturalist father, Bomba (Jason
Sudeikis). Through magical means, Mary Katherine becomes small and she’s instrumental
in the war between Ronin’s Leaf Men and Mandrake’s boggins. Director Chris
Wedge falls into the common animator’s trap of making the human characters a
lot duller than the creatures. In this case, a slug and a snail steal all of
the scenes they’re in. 5/29/13
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