"Epic" is a beautifully created animated family film based on William Joyce's book "The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs (Harper Trophy Books). It is rather like a better execution of the same basic idea as "Arthur & The Invisibles" except that in this case the whole film is animated where "Arthur and the invisibles" had the human-size portions played by real actors and the miniature sections animated. Ironically that means that, this film having a star studded voice cast, several of whom are extremely easy on the eye, the film does not show them as they usually appear: but the characters are so beautifully drawn that you don't really mind.
Case in point: the heroine and central character, Mary Katherine (who prefers to be known as MK) is voiced by actress Amanda Seyfried and the queen of the forest, Queen Tara, is voiced by Beyonce Knowles. I imagine one or two dads would much prefer to have seen the ladies concerned rather than animated images for which they provided the voices. But that reaction won't have lasted more than a few seconds after seeing how well their characters were voiced and drawn. Christian Kaplan who did the casting for this film obviously did pick the cast for their voices rather than their appearance, they more than justify the choice.
MK is a teenage girl whose mother has recently died. At the start of the film she arrives at the semi-derelict house, on the edge of a forest, where her father, mad scientist Professor Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) lives and studies the fauna of the forest. Bomba had wrecked both his career and his marriage through his obsessive attempts to prove that an "advanced civilisation" of tiny people exists in the forest.
It probably won't be a spoiler to anyone thinking of going to see this film - certainly not to anyone who has seen the trailer - that Bomba's apparently preposterous theory, which no other human takes seriously, is in fact correct. Nor that his daughter finds herself magically shrunk to the same size as the tiny denizens of the forest - and caught up in the constant war between two factions of forest creatures.
Although some of the less intelligent promotional material for this film presents that conflict as a battle between good and evil - and I have seen it wrongly suggested that the battle in the forest might also affect our world as well - the actual presentation in the film is a lot more nuanced than this. One side, led by Queen Tara (Beyonce Knowles) and her "leaf men" soldiers, represents growth, the other led by Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) and his "boggan" troops represent decay. Children or anyone else who wants to take a simple moral from the film will see Queen Tara's side as representing good while Mandrake is evil, but adults will realise that the life of the forest would actually depend on a balance between the two.
Indeed, one of the best things about the film is that the "bad guy," Mandrake, is not cartoonishly and two-dimensionally evil. Like the most dangerous villains in the real world or the best literature Mandrake is all the more formidable as an opponent because he has characteristics which in a "good guy" would be recognised as virtues. Instead of going down the all-too-familiar route of presenting the villain as being pathetic, cowardly, and full of hatred even to those closest to him, the film gives Mandrake a lot of the best lines, shows both him and his son and general Dagda (Blake Anderson) leading from the front at various stages of the film, and doesn't show them constantly plotting to betray each other.
Other strong and well voiced characters which enrich the film include Ronin (Colin Farrell) the general of the Leaf men, Nod (Josh Hutcherson), an independent minded young leafman whose dead father had been Ronin's friend, a pair of sometimes charming and sometimes aggravating molluscs, Mub the slug (Aziz Ansari) and Grub the snail (Chris O'Dowd), and a glow-worm impresario called Nim Galuu (Steven Tyler) who is also the keeper of the magic scrolls which record everything which goes on in the forest. The film also features the rapper Armando Pérez, better known by his stage name Pitbull, voicing a frog mafia boss.
Every time I go to see a new animated film I think the depiction of the characters, scenery and events could not get any more beautifully done, and every time you get to the next one you realise you were wrong, and this film is yet another visual feast. The plotting is also reasonably tight, keeping your attention, there are plenty of simple jokes for the kids and more sophisticated ones for the adults. It had me laughing at the jokes quite a few times.
Not everyone will like this film - some people will see it as far too similar to "Arthur and the Invisibles" and others will consider it a bit twee and childish. But I would consider it a very good film for children up to the age of about thirteen - my eleven-year-old daughter certainly loved it - and which adults can enjoy with their kids.
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