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Cloaked Critic Reviews Epic

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!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!

"Epic" is a 2013 computer-animated 3D fantasy action-adventure film very loosely based on William Joyce's children's book, "The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs"....Seriously?! I know the name of the book sounds fuckin' dumb, but they should have still managed to come up with a better name than "epic". That is one of those words that's been thrown around so carelessly until its pretty much lost all of its original meaning. Furthermore, of all the words I could use to describe this movie "epic" sure has heck ain't one of them! In fact, probably the only"epic" thing this movie shows us is a pivotal character who dies less than 30 minutes into the run-time!  They should have just stuck with the original title the film was greenlit under, "The Leaf Men", that or the movie's French title, "Battle of the Secret Kingdom". Either one of those would have been WAY better than "epic", but hey! It's Fox, so terrible decisions are to be expected.

I have to admit that this movie was actually rather interesting, and by that I mean this has to be the most under-the-radar mainstream production I've ever NOT heard about, and that's just the point. I NEVER even heard about this thing. I never saw any advertisements for it, nobody talked about it before or after it came out. The only way I even found out it existed was because I stumbled upon it one day while looking up information about "Frozen"...after which I immediately forgot about it until recently when one of my favorite Youtube channels briefly mentioned it.

This movie comes to us from the same fine people who also brought us "Ice Age" (and its shitty sequels). I think the main reason this movie was so quickly forgotten is because it's just so bland and uninspired. Seriously...no joke! We've all seen this movie before. Without even having watched a single second of it, I read a quick plot summary and immediately exclaimed "Hey, they totally just ripped off Arthur and the Invisibles!" The movie literally is just "Arthur and the Invisibles" with a copious splash of "FernGully"...but then I suppose to be fair "Arthur and the Invisibles" was just "FernGully" mixed in with a heavy dose of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (the two movies even star the same kid), and after 20 minutes it became clear that the filmmakers also ripped off "Lord of the Rings" (can we PLEASE stop using Tolkien as how-to-guide for fantasy).

I had myself a good hard chuckle upon reading that the director, Chris Wedge, actually had the balls to compare this movie to "Star Wars", or in his own words, "While Bill wrote a wonderful book, it is a quaint story. We wanted to make a gigantic action-adventure movie." When asked about the film's similarities to "FernGully" and "Avatar" he 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." Sure, Wedge! Whatever you wanna tell yourself! :XD:

Additionally, the movie also plays on ALL the cliches! We've got not one, but TWO main characters with daddy issues, both the protagonist and the deuteragonist have one or both parents that are dead, we've got a father who's too obsessed with his work, child feels embarrassed by/ashamed of their parent, secondary male protagonist/love interest is a devil-may care rebel/slacker, there's forces of life and nature vs the forces of death and destruction, the main protagonist is the unlikely savior of another world...the list just goes on. Even some of the character's visual designs seem pretty derivative. Mary Katherine (MK) looks a lot like Anna from "Frozen" and her male counterpart, Nod, sorta reminds me slightly of Flynn Rider from "Tangled"...or at least that's who they look like to me.

Another point I feel merits mentioning, is this movie's morbid sense of humor. It's not a prevailing issue throughout the entire film, but there are certain scenes where the movie attempts to interject jokes or sight-gags which are perhaps a tad too mature for this movie's intended audience. I mean it's not really a big thing for me, but I imagine most young children watching this would find scenes like the little fruit fly's rapid aging and death less funny and more visually disturbing.

They must have really thought this movie was going to do well; that or they were worried it wouldn't do well, either way those are the only explanations I can give for some of the celebrity voice cast they bribed to be in this thing. They managed to talk Pitbull and Beyoncé into being a part of this. Wonder how much they had to pay to get them? I must say I was rather surprised to learn the voice actor for Mandrake WAS NOT James Woods. The character was actually voiced by Christoph Waltz, but I'll be damned if the man doesn't sound a hell of a lot like James Woods! Colin Farrell plays the leader of the Leaf Men, Amanda Seyfried and Josh Hutcherson play the main protagonists, Aziz Ansari plays...a slug, and they even have Steven Tyler of Aerosmith playing the part of a Glowworm...dude, seems to be going for a bad Dom Deluise impression.

One of the few good things I will credit this movie on is the badass manner in which they wrote Queen Tara. Not since Princess Leia and her mother, Padme (before George Lucas screwed her up in the sequels) have we had a royal lady with such a hardcore fighting spirit. For that one scene in this movie, it's like watching Mother Nature do battle with the forces of destruction. The presentation of the scene really is quite...well, EPIC. Too bad she dies before the 30 minute mark...but then heck even her death was pretty epic! So I'll give the movie some credit there...Hell, I'm not made of stone.

This is clearly a story about "fairies", but I like that they don't actually call them "fairies". The only terms used to describe these beings are "Leaf Men" and "Boggans". That might be the only truly original thing about this movie...not that that's saying much. I guess I just can appreciate the tender nuance of taking a very familiar thing and making it seem unfamiliar by differentiating it from the familiar terminology typically associated with said thing. In other words, since the movie never refers to the characters as "fairies", your mind doesn't initially associate them with the standard fairytale trope...even though the connection is still pretty damn obvious. The humans aren't even called humans in this story. The Leaf Men refer to all humans as "Stompers"; which is also kinda creative...I would have half expected them to label all men as "giants".

After watching the movie through to the end, I gotta say it really doesn't deserve ALL of the negative criticism it gets. Sure, it's extremely derivative and doesn't really bring any new ideas to the table, but there were several instances where I genuinely found myself amused, bemused, and emotionally-stirred. Honestly, I think the true main reason this movie was largely forgotten is because it was overshadowed by the hype that "Frozen"received. Ironically enough though, I found the story in this movie to be far more coherent and the characters were no where near as flat and uninteresting as the ones in "Frozen". I will happily take this movie's snail and slug over Olaf any day of the week!
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RageofDarkness's avatar

You know, if I had saw it back in 2013, I would have described it as a "less cool version of The Spiderwick Chronicles".