Psycho's Movie Reviews #237: Epic (2013)

Epic (stylized as epic) is a 2013 American computer-animated fantasy action-adventure film loosely based on William Joyce's 1996 children's book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios; written by William Joyce, James V. Hart, Daniel Shere, Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember; and directed by Chris Wedge, the director of the animated movies Ice Age (2002) and Robots (2005). The film features the voices of Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Pitbull, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, and Beyoncé Knowles.

After teenager Mary Katherine gets shrunk and teleported to a tiny woodland kingdom inhabited by talking slugs, flower people and tiny soldiers called Leafmen, she is swept up in a wild adventure between good and evil and, alongside her new friends, must fight to protect the world she never knew existed.

Epic was released on May 24, 2013, by 20th Century Fox. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $268 million against its $93 million budget.

Plot

After her mother dies, 17-year-old Mary Katherine, or M.K., moves in with her eccentric scientist father Professor Bomba, who has spent his life searching for tiny humanoid soldiers called Leafmen in Danbury, Connecticut. They protect the forest near where Bomba lives from wicked creatures called Boggans and their malevolent leader Mandrake. Bomba’s determination to find proof of his theories irritates his daughter as she believes it’s nonsense, like her mother did, but Bomba assures her he’ll find proof.

Meanwhile, an independent young Leafman named Nod decides to quit, much to the ire of the no-nonsense leader Ronin, who promised Nod’s late father he’d look out for his son.

The benevolent fairy queen of the forest, Queen Tara, must choose an heir to her throne and goes out to a field of leaf pods on board her flying barge and escorted by the Royal guards, arriving at the field guarded by a laid-back slug named Mub and a wannabe Leafman snail named Grub. Immediately after she chooses a pod, the Boggans attack. Tara flees the area with the pod, and though flying Leafmen bodyguards do their best to protect her, they are soon overwhelmed by the sheer number of Boggans. Unable to reach the barge and the safety of the Guards, while being chased, Ronin arrives for her and the pair fly off on his hummingbird mount. They are then attacked by Mandrake and his son Dagda. Dagda is killed by Ronin, but not until after he shoots Tara.

Meanwhile, M.K. decides to leave after having an argument with Bomba about his research. Before she can leave, Bomba's dog Ozzy runs into the woods. While looking for Ozzy, M.K. sees Tara falling. Dying, Tara gives her the pod and uses her magic to shrink her. She tells M.K. to take the pod to Nim Galuu, a glowworm wizard, before she dies, and M.K. joins Ronin and the Leafmen, along with Mub and Grub. Ronin discovers that Nod has entered a race against other creatures and bugs on birds. Nod goes back on a deal with a short-tempered toad gangster named Bufo to throw the race. Before Bufo and his two henchmen can feed Nod to a snake, Ronin intervenes and orders them to leave. A reluctant Nod joins him, M.K., Mub, and Grub after hearing about Queen Tara's death, which Bufo overhears.

Ronin, Nod, M.K., Mub, and Grub eventually track down Nim Galuu. He then leads them down to the library, where M.K. discovers Tara's brief message before shrinking her, and a message that will get her back to normal size. When Ronin leaves, Nod takes M.K. on a deer ride and they begin to fall for each other. Meanwhile, Mandrake has had the Boggans bring Bufo to him, finding out the location of the pod. Mandrake goes to Nim Galuu's place to steal the pod, which, if it blooms in darkness, will help Mandrake destroy the forest. He takes the pod and kidnaps Mub and Grub. Ronin scolds Nod for not being there to protect the pod. To get into Boggan territory undiscovered, M.K., Nod, and Ronin set out to Bomba's house to get some disguises, where M.K. learns that the Leafmen have deliberately been leading Bomba off their trail. Bomba sees that he has visitors and captures M.K., fainting when he sees her. M.K. marks the location of Moonhaven on a map Bomba has made of the forest before rejoining Nod and Ronin.

When they reach the Boggan land Ronin distracts the Boggans while M.K. and Nod rescue Mub, Grub, and the pod. Mandrake discovers them and orders the Boggans to stop them. M.K., Nod, Mub, and Grub escape alive, but Ronin sacrifices himself to ensure their escape. Before the full moon can sprout the pod at Moonhaven, Mandrake's bats block the light, causing the pod to begin sprouting in darkness. The Leafmen set out to fight the Boggans; M.K. tries to get help from her father by visiting his various cameras he had set in the forest. However, upon regaining consciousness, Bomba believes that he didn't really see M.K. and that he has been insane all these years, and shuts down all his cameras. He changes his mind when he sees the red push-pin that M.K. had put on his map.

Bomba is overjoyed to see that he has been right and he follows M.K. to Moonhaven. M.K. uses Bomba’s iPod to make bat sounds, luring Mandrake's bats away. Meanwhile, Mub and Nim Galuu try to stop Mandrake from reaching the pod, but are unsuccessful. Just then, Ronin appears, bearing scars and bruises from the Boggans. Mandrake manages to outdo him, but is defended by Nod, who finally realizes the importance of teamwork. Before Mandrake can obtain his victory, the pod blooms in moonlight, defeating the Boggans, and sealing Mandrake into the burl of a nearby tree.

The chosen heir is the flower child who helped save Tara earlier in the film. Grub becomes a Leafman, Nod and Ronin reconcile, and Nod and M.K. kiss before M.K. is returned to her original size.

After reuniting with Bomba and becoming his assistant, the human family still keep regular contact with their small friends as they continue the research of their world.

Production

In 2006, it was reported that Chris Wedge would be directing an animated feature film based on William Joyce's book, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs for Fox Animation. Joyce, who had already collaborated with Wedge as a designer and producer on the 2005 film Robots, was set to produce the film. At one point, Wedge got permission to find a new home for the film and turned to Pixar, led by John Lasseter, a close friend that Wedge knew from working on Tron. When Pixar tried to close the rights for the film and start development, Fox changed their mind, and the film returned to Fox. The film was officially greenlit in 2009, under the title Leaf Men. In May 2012, Fox announced the final title for the film (Epic) 3D-CGI its first cast details, and a plot. According to Wedge, he was not satisfied with the renaming, which was decided by the marketing department. He also expressed dissatisfaction with subtitles given to the film in some non-English countries, including the French subtitle, The Battle of the Secret Kingdom.

Although the film is based on and borrows many characters from Joyce's book, its plot has been significantly changed. Wedge explained: "While Bill wrote a wonderful book, it is a quaint story. We wanted to make a gigantic action-adventure movie." To address online speculations about whether the film is similar to other films, like FernGully: The Last Rainforest or Avatar, Wedge said: "I hate to associate it with other movies. It is adventure on the scale of Star Wars. And it does immerse the audience completely in a world like Avatar. But it has its own personality."

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was internationally released starting with May 16, 2013. In the United States, it premiered on May 18, 2013, at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City, and was theatrically released in on May 24, 2013.

Epic received generally mixed to positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 65% approval rating based on 127 reviews, with an average score of 5.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Though its narrative themes are all too familiar, Epic is beautifully animated and crafted with just enough flair to make for solid family entertainment." Another review aggregation website, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 52 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an "A" grade on an A+-to-F scale, while specifically child audiences gave it an "A+" grade.

Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+, saying "The story lacks the specialness of a Pixar movie—it rethreads the same eco-battle archetypes as FernGully and Avatar—but it's a perfectly appealing explosion of colour for a lazy summer day." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a mixed review, saying "Where the animated film comes up short is on the inspiration front—despite the intriguing terrain, its stock inhabitants lack the sort of unique personality traits that would prevent them from feeling overly familiar." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars, saying "It's difficult to keep its story and characters, or even its visual design, in your mind's eye, in part because the five credited screenwriters overload the narrative with incident and threatening complication." Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "The story's simple enough to appeal to young kids (the 8-year-old with me pronounced the movie "awesome"), but adults will enjoy the beautiful animation, whether 3D or 2D." Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of five, saying "As beautiful as it is, Epic is fatally lacking in visceral momentum and dramatic edge."

Produced on a budget of $93 million, Epic grossed $107.5 million in North America, and $160.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $268.4 million. In North America, the film earned $9.3 million on its opening day, and opened to number four in its first weekend, with $33.5 million and $42.8 million over the four day Memorial Weekend (Friday–Monday), behind Fast & Furious 6, The Hangover Part III, and Star Trek Into Darkness. In its second weekend, the film dropped to number five, grossing an additional $16.6 million. In its third weekend, the film stayed at number five, grossing $11.9 million. In its fourth weekend, the film dropped to number seven, grossing $6.3 million. While the film was overshadowed by other animated films that summer including Monsters University and Despicable Me 2, the film finished in third out of six family films that summer, and became a moderate box office success.

Budget $93 million

Box office $268.4 million

My Review

I didn't think hugely of the trailer, but considering that I love animation, I like Blue Sky's previous work and that the voice cast comprises of some really talented people I was going to see it anyway. Epic is not a bad film and I am glad I watched it and gave it a chance, but considering the talent involved it could have been more. The best asset is definitely the animation, which is just wonderful. The colours are so beautiful to watch, characters and objects are well-modelled and defined and the backgrounds are really detailed and life-like. Danny Elfman's score is not one of his best(his Edward Scissorhands score is my favourite) but it captures the fantasy-adventure element of the story to excellent effect, while the songs are catchy without interfering with the mood too much. The action sequences are excitingly choreographed and animation-wise you can tell that a lot of effort went into them.

The script was a mixed bag for me, in parts it was engaging and smartly written especially with the comic relief, in others like with the lead characters it was a little too simplistic and under-baked. Apparently there were about 5 or 6 different writers, and it does show sometimes. The story is also a mix, it starts off slow but it picks up with the action sequences, a good balance of comedic and scary moments and the message and philosophical aspects, which in turns were fascinating, didn't preach too much and made their point. It does get rather generic though with some plot points that has been explored a fair bit before in films and stronger done, and also feels too simple, never really rising above the ordinary. The characters are not bad, I did like Mary Katherine and the comic relief were great, but most of them did come across as underwritten basic archetypes. I do think much more could have been done with Mandrake. He's very well animated and voiced and I did feel sorry for them, but he never does come that much of a threat- which I think weakens the good vs. evil aspect of the story and other than feeling sorry for them he didn't come across as very well developed.

On the most part the voice acting is good, not all of it entirely worked though. Josh Hutcherson is rather bland in the main hero role, not entirely his fault as his character is too and his dialogue isn't much to write home about, a shame because this is the same Josh Hutcherson who was so good in Bridge in Terabithia. Beyoncé does caring and sympathetic quite well and does put a lot of heart into the character, but at the same time I don't think she really embodied the character of the Queen Tara, it came across as not enough Tara and too much Beyoncé trying to be her. Steven Tyler came across to me as a very strange casting choice and I still think that he was out of place here.

I really liked everybody else though. Amanda Seyfried is a very spirited heroine, while Chris O'Dowd is hilarious as one of the snail. Aniz Ansari is also inspired. Colin Farrell does sincere and soft-spoken very well, and while it does come across as overdone sometimes Jason Sudeikis is very zany and amiable in a role that requires those qualities. Christoph Waltz does a great job acting suave, droll and menacing, giving his all into a character that doesn't ever quite match, though maybe this is in comparison to his previous characters and films where his parts were much richer in how they were written(to be honest though I was not expecting anything like his previous characters seeing as Epic is a completely different kettle of fish to them).

Overall, not as good as it could have been but a decent enough effort. 6.4/10