Review - Epic (2013)

Starring Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrell and Josh Hutcherson.
Directed by Chris Wedge.

From the director who brought you Ice Age and Robots some years ago, EPIC is the first animated feature of this year's summer lineup. Unfortunately the only thing epic about this movie was its name. Why was the movie called Epic anyways? In order to be "epic", you have to actually be a good movie first.

The story of Epic is one we have witnessed a million times before. It begins with two narratives running hand in hand at the start. We meet the Leaf people, led by the soldier Ronin (Colin Farrell), who live in the forest and protect it from evil creatures known as Boggans. The leader of the Boggans is Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) and of course, he wants to destroy the forest and have domination. We then meet Bomba (Jason Sudeikis), a scientist who lives near the forest. Bomba is hell-bent on proving the Leaf people's existence. His estranged and depressed daughter M.K (Amanda Seyfried) comes to visit him and brings along her sob story.

So both narratives basically come together when M.K gets pulled into the Leaf People's world. I couldn't wait until she got pulled in to relieve us of her boring and cliched sob story. Story-wise, Epic brings absolutely nothing new to the table. It is just cliches upon cliches upon cliches and sadly, I can't pin-point one character that I really liked. Epic tries to be all emotional at one point but ain't nobody gonna take that seriously. Most animated movies are usually charming and humorous but Epic is hardly any of those. The slug Mub (Aziz Ansari) and snail Grub (Chris O'Dowd) characters do what they can on being the film's comic reliefs but not even the jokes connected much. What I liked about this movie though were the fighting sequences and the slow motion bits - they actually looked cool, but that was it. Epic was flat and too drowned in cliches to be considered anything special or even memorable.

If Fern Gully: The Last Rain Forest and A Bug's Life had a lazy boring baby - it would be Epic. Sadly the film doesn't bring much joy, laughs or anything customary of your typical fun animated film. The voicings were okay but this wasn't "epic" at all.

Rating: 5.5/10




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