Director Chris Wedge has previous form in animated family fair with the original Ice Age proving he can provide amiable characterisation with good thrills. Here, however he falls short of his own high watermark.
Epic stars Amanda Seyfried as MK, an isolated teen magically shrunk down to tiny proportions and forced to take part in a battle between good and evil in a magical forest behind her back garden.
The tiny people in the forest idea is a compelling one, as is the journey of the hero. In fact, there’s no shortage of tried and tested ideas here that should work but don’t And therein lies the problem. The crammed script jumps from one half baked idea to another making it difficult to get a real grasp on anything much at all. It’s like it was cobbled together from a million other decent ideas and, as such, ultimately ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
The voice cast is hit and miss too, with the ever reliable Christophe Waltz nailing it as the sinister baddie Mandrake and Colin Farrel giving good Gaelic as the gruff foot soldier Ronin. Elsewhere though, the blatant stunt casting of Beyonce as the bizarrely sassy Queen is jarring, and the rest just seem to blend into the background.
On the plus side Wedge is a genuinely skilled filmmaker, and as such Epic is certainly not short of its fair share of positive attributes. It’s truly lovely to look at, with the CGI artists doing a cracking job of oversizing the forest and manufacturing some dazzling backdrops for a host of surprisingly entertaining and hair raising action sequences.
And at the end of the day then, it’s engaging in parts and offers some decent action but struggles under the weight of too-many-cooks and ultimately ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Adults will probably struggle to find a great deal to write home about, but it’s harmless fun for the kids and ultimately that’s what matters.
3/5