So, yeah, I saw Epic yesterday. It was meh. Kinda regret paying money for it.

Now I don't mean regret regret. It isn't horrible or anything, and the only thing I don't like is one particular peeve which I will get to in a minute but it really feels like those six dollars I paid at the matinee could have been better spent. Maybe on comic books, maybe on a Rarity doll, maybe on After Earth, a movie which some people are already calling the worst movie ever, which would have given me some perverted, MST3K fun.

But my friend really wanted to see this, so I did, and I spent half the time imagining what the movie could have done better, which is probably not the intended effect. That's probably because the movie failed to engage me on any level above "OH MAI GAWD PRETTY FLOWERZ" or the occasional chuckle. And I get the feeling that Blue Sky (the studio who made this) really wanted to create some depth in this movie, but they just lacked the skills to do so, to be frank.

So what's this movie about, yo?

Okay, so there's some leaf guys and goblins and a pod and the end.

More specifically, the plot revolves around the idea that out of humanity's sight, deep within the wilderness, lies a constant battle between nature and rejuvenation and the destructive power of rot.

No, I mean there's a literal battle straight out of the Swamp Thing comics between some dudes called the Leaf-Men, who represent life, and the Rot, who are basically a bunch a goblins and orcs. And they're all the size of bugs and stuff, so their doing all this on the backs of birds and bats and on the sides of trees.

Humans can't see all that jazz because they exist on a different plain of reality, like flies (hey, that's the movies explanation). But there's this one scientist dude (Jason Sudeikis) who's all like, "dude, tiny warriors", and everybody else was all like "dude, you crazy", and his wife was all like "imma divorce you and raise our daughter, Mary Kate, by myself and then tragically die, meaning our daughter (voiced by Amanda Seyfried) will visit you in your creepy house in the woods because she promised me she would try to patch things up with you, setting off the plot of the movie".

So all that happens, on the same day the Queen of the Leaf-Men (Beyonce) is seeking a flower pod that will pick her heir and create more peace for the forest or some bullshit. But alas, the goblin dudes, led by the incredibly cool looking but also incredibly bland Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) attacks and puts the safety of the pod in jeopardy because they want to spread their evil rot, or some bullshit. And unfortunately for Mary Kate, she comes across all this bullshit and is shrunk down by Disney magic and entrusted with the safety of the pod for a tenuous reason which will become somewhat clear only late in the movie.

And thus, Mary Kate is off on a quest to protect the pod until it blooms and picks a new queen (or some bullshit), with the help of the Leaaf-Men general guy (Colin Farrell), a skilled but predictably undisciplined hot shot Leaf-Man (Peeta), and the obvious comic relief in the form of a snail and a slug (Chris O'Dowd and Aziz Ansari, respectively).

Is the movie successful?

As eye-candy that will distract younglings for an hour, yeah, but as an engaging piece of storytelling, naw, man. It's too archetypical to be interesting, with any attempt to build up character or adding emotional weight falling flat.

The sad part of all that is that there's a lot of opportunities to do so. Pixar would have went to town with the "distant father and daughter trying to reconcile after the mother's death" plotline, and there's this bit early on where you think the movie is going to add some depth to the villain and give him a personal reason to do what he does, but his character doesn't really change trajectory, so it's a pointless plot-point.

Not enough creativity is shown with the idea that all these characters are only a few inches tall, and the fantasy elements aren't really intriguing. I don't need the movie to go into detail about that stuff, but at least make me interested in this universe, like Star Wars, Dark Crystal, or MLP does. And while there's an inherent knowledge that the forest being destroyed is a bad thing, we never feel the weight of that event actually happening because we don't care about the people living there. To the film's credit, though, at least it doesn't go the Avatar route of being overly-manipulative and tries to make us care through actual storytelling, even if that storytelling is subpar.

And maybe that wouldn't be so bad, except the characters the movie decides to focus on aren't all that interesting either. It doesn't help that the voice actors don't really give performances, so much as just read the lines on the page. They're serviceable, but that's it.

Admittedly, the only voice that doesn't really fit is Waltz as the villain. I think he's a great actor, and he has a great voice for a villainy (he sounds like a German James Woods), but it doesn't fit the warrior king of the goblins thing they've got going on. Michael Ironside or someone similar would have been a better choice.

Okay, time for that peeve I mentioned.

Pitbull is in this movie.

It isn't the fact that he's Pitbull that pisses me off, it's the fact that his character shouldn't be in this movie, according to every screenwriting sensibility I have. He's there for two scenes, serves only a very small role that could have easily been cut out, and he adds absolutely nothing to the proceedings. He's the kind of character who would be cut from a script when the writer is trimming the fat.

Same thing with that slug and snail duo. They add some funny bits here and there, but their sole reason for sticking around in the story could have also been written out.

I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but seeing characters in an animated movie just because they can be voiced by celebrities who's names you can stick in the trailer really annoys me. I hate movies wasting screentime and resources on that stuff, because they could be spent on other, more important things, like developing the characters beyond just having them say "my parents are dead, that's sad", or making them funny, so we don't need obvious comic relief.

This really is a movie driven by the knowledge that you've seen the trailer, by the way. Instead of slowly introducing the unique fantasy elements or finding an interesting way of selling that they're really small, the movie begins and it's all like "F*** it, you've seen the trailers, you know that they're tiny and it's all magical, who cares about capturing the imagination of the youth who see this movie, they've already seen this in the video we slapped up on Youtube".

In the end...

It sounds like I have nothing good to say about this movie, but that's not true. It looks fantastic, the fact that they're miniature people riding birds and stuff is actually pretty neat, and though it is outdone by the action scenes Dreamworks have been doing lately, the battle sequences are cool.

But it's too much of a missed opportunity on so many levels to recommend. Just stay home and watch How To Train Your Dragon again.

5/10

P.S. Going to a matinee showing for a family film on a school day is depressing as Hell.