Artemis Fowl
Live action adaptations have always been a hit or miss track record for Disney in our modern age. In a bid to win over audiences, many of them want to feel deeper in their meaning and entertainment factor but tend to fall flat due a number of lackluster factors that make the experience feel forgettable. A group of culprits that are usually associated with this trend are their remakes of their animated classics but that has been discussed in detail from my past reviews of those films (see Aladdin and Lion King (2019) for examples). The other group in this spectrum is basically everything that attempts to handle either young adult adventure novels such as John Carter (2012) and A Wrinkle in Time (2018) or anything else like The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018). This brings us to their latest project in the former within the second group, Artemis Fowl, which was directed by Kenneth Branagh and was adapting the books of the same name. I never read those books but heard about its intriguing premise about a cold calculated villain-like child pulling off shenanigans against fairies and other creatures. The film itself had been through development hell since 2001 having gone through a number of directors and studio updates until Disney secured the rights in 2013. The marketing campaign looked like an omen of bad news only focusing on special effects rather than bringing intrigue to its premise. It was initially intended for a theatrical release but was instead relegated to a Disney+ in order to provide new content (and it felt more like a sacrificial lamb compared to the studios upcoming finished films). I watched it recently (not on that streaming service) and not only were my fears confirmed but it was even worse than I thought.
*Note: Like most media based on books that are reviewed here, the faithfulness to the source material will not be taken into consideration but rather how the movie either rises to the occasion or trips over its own blunders. Many entries like this tend to deviate in some manner due to either financial or creative limitations (for better or worse) so a comparison won't be mentioned here to avoid bloating the length of this critique. This is one of the most baffling viewings for me that I paused the movie many times to ask a friend who read the novels and had seen this "What's going on here?!?".
Unfortunately, none of that has been realized but is rather reduced to a failed product that is stale, rushed, and poorly executed on many angles. For starters the titular lead is one of the most boring elements in his own tale as not only is his screen time limited due to the need to build the other story parts, but also how neutered his characteristics are. This adaptation commits one of the worst offenses that hurts the overall experience: delivering far too much exposition and not having any room to let the characters properly develop their personalities/relationships to one another (imagine the technique of waterboarding except replace the water with many explanations for 90 minutes). The amount of lore it wants to deliver becomes an incomprehensible mess that will make it incredibly difficult for families to invest into, especially when any appealing visuals (anything nice and cute) is practically nonexistent. Turning it into a by the numbers bland formula is already a bad enough head start but the decision to shorten the runtime results with this being one of the worst adaptations of all time. At the end of it, the filmmakers had the nerve to plant seeds near the end to try teasing a possible sequel to this disastrous feature thinking they are putting a cherry on top of this family product.
How are the actors? In regards to story importance, the actors to focus on are Ferdia Shaw and Lara McDonnell. For the weight given to his lead part, Ferdia is miscast as Artemis due to his wooden flat performance as a character whose interesting characteristics have been drained (it should be noted that this is his acting debut and his line reading is cringeworthy). Lara fairs better than him despite the script problems just by being the most expressive though that's not saying much. "Special" mention goes to Josh Gad who on the one hand is also expressive but is a major turn off due to 2 factors: his appearance as "diet" Hagrid from Harry Potter is made worse by the CGI used on him in an unappealing manner and his narrator role is boring to listen to. Dishonorable mentions go to Judi Dench, Colin Farrell, and Joshua McGuire due to the former going through yet another role (like in Cats (2019) where you can tell she doesn't care about the terrible lines she has to give while the latter two are mismanaged in their limited screen time as well as small/insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things.
Overall Consensus: Artemis Fowl fails as a film due to an inability to allow audiences to be connect with its exposition heavy script, uninteresting characters, rushed editing, familiar bland plot formula, and many missed opportunities. 1/2 Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes PG
Reasons to watch it: You have read the aforementioned novels and want to see how much development hell/the treatment it received from Disney. You want to see the scenes where Josh Gad does something disgusting with his mouth and body.
Reasons to avoid it: You have read the novels but don't want to see it butchered. You dislike many of the studios recent live action entries. You hate too much explaining and sequel baiting in movies. You dislike cringeworthy line reading and bizarre directing. You are tired of the average "subpar villain kidnaps a loved one to get their hands on a powerful MacGuffin plot device".
Comments
Post a Comment