Epic

Epic is the newest animated fantasy movie from Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Rio) and really the only film aimed for children in theaters. Directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots) and with a cast full of big names, this film may sound like an enjoyable one, but unfortunately does not live up to the hype.

The life of Mary Kathryn (Amanda Seyfried) has been tough, her Mother had recently passed away and she had to move back in with her eccentric Father Dr. Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) who is obsessed with the idea of little people living in the surrounding forest. It is in fact this obsession that caused MK’s mother to leave her father and bring MK to the City. But here is the kicker… THERE ARE LITTLE PEOPLE THAT LIVE IN THE FOREST! They live in a medieval society where the good guys, the Leafmen, keep the forest beautiful by fighting off the Boggans and their evil leader Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) who rot away everything they touch. The Queen of the forest, Tara (Beyonce Knowles), heads out to a field of leaf pods to choose her heir, but when she arrives she, along with the Leader of the Leafmen, Ronin (Colin Farrell), are ambushed by a giant army of Boggans and the whole forest goes into disarray as the leaf pod is stolen and the Queen is killed. At the moment of Tara’s death our main character MK stumbles upon the queen’s last moments in life and is transformed into a smaller person just like the Leafmen. It is up to MK, Ronin, a young soldier named Nod (Josh Hutcherson) and a the comical Snail and Slug Mub (Aziz Ansari) and Grub (Chris O’Dowd) to obtain the leaf pod and restore the forest to its former glory.

For children, this film is great, it’s appropriately action packed and the clean comedy will make you smile every once in a while. The casting choices were a bit odd and even though Beyonce, Steven Tyler, and Pitbull are talented people, they should stick to music. The animation is nothing special, it doesn't push the boundaries of this art form, but is not poor quality. The real problem lies within the story itself. At the beginning of the film the death of MK’s mother had recently passed away, a taxing emotional toll on a 17 year old girl, however this only seems to affect MK for the first 3 minutes of the film, it’s not very important to the story but it is important for the characterization. It is as if the film has only one main focus and that the possible sub-plots are irrelevant which could be due to the 102 minute running time.

All in all the film has the makings of an interesting story in a clever fantasy world, but doesn't reach its full potential. For children this would be a great movie to see, but for those of us over 10 this may be one movie to skip. 4/10