Epic review!

Now, before I go into a little behind the scenes info about this movie before reviewing it, I was going to review this film first when I started this blog because I saw it around the time, but when I saw Despicable Me 2, I thought it was more sufficient as a starting review, and I had more to say. I always had Epic on my mind because after rewatching it after renting it on DVD, I found that I actually have more to say. Anyway, Blue Sky's most recent film, Epic, is based on the book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, who's also an executive producer for this adaptation, and was also supervisor of Dreamwork's Rise of the the Guardians, which also happens to be another adaptation of one of his book series. I would also like to point out that the movie's protagonist is named after Joyce's daughter, Mary Katherine Joyce who died at the age of 18 from brain cancer and that the rights to make an adaptation of the book were originally given to Pixar, but were given to Fox, who distributes Blue Sky's movies. So is this movie as epic as the pretentious title, or is there actually a reason behind why Blue Sky called it that? Let's find out!

Story: if there's anything epic about this movie, it's most definitely not the story! I've heard people compare it to Ferngully and Avatar, and they were right! What do they have in common? Well, someone is transported/shrunk to a new world where they have to save the environment from the bad guy because they're evil and there's a huge war with nature while the protagonist is pretty much inadvertently double crossing them as they get to know the people of the new world. Yeah...I'll give it credit  that Epic doesn't make the environmental message as preachy as the other movies I mentioned and there are pretty cool action scenes, but they throw in way too many subplots added in! It's as if the writers thought the main plot wouldn't interest the kids enough, so they decided to add in other cliches and comedy relief so they can Nod's story about being a rebellious Leafman goes nowhere and is predictable, the romance between MK and Nod is pretty bad because it's underdeveloped and they have no chemistry whatsoever and the relationship between MK and her estranged dad is really underdeveloped. I mean, the situation sounds good, but it wasn't handled well and there isn't any time for it to be properly discussed. I mean, the loss of a parent at an age where it's easy to get emotional is a very serious subject and the movie should've spent time to actually see how it affects Mary Katherine and her dad never seems to think about it until he realizes what an idiot he's been and how he lost everything, only until he discovers everything he's been obsessing over is true and goes back to being his idiotic self! So, pretty much, the movie wasted a perfectly good subject matter! Even Lilo and Stitch did it better even with the relatively kid friendly main plot! Sorry, about that, had to get it off my chest! So is there anything good about any of the subplots? Well, there's one with Ronin being in love with Tara, but that's only in the beginning and the end of the movie, and like I mentioned, the environmental message is less preachy, but it's replaced with a very basic good vs. evil plot!

Animation: now here's the part which surprised everyone when the trailer was first shown and discovered it was made by the same guys who did the Ice Age and Rio movies! The style is far different than the cartoony style that Blue Sky normally does, and it looks amazing! The character designs are more realistic and thee attention to detail on the skin is perfect. The environments are very innovative where the Leafmen and the Boggans live with the contrasting colour schemes, as well as the. The attention to detail of everything is perfect from the textures of the clothes, the armour of the Leafmen & the fur of the animals. The fact everything is to scale makes it even more amazing to watch, and the scene which really shows this was when MK, Nodd & Ronin go to her dad's house. What impressed me the most was the character animation, being very creative with the theory that when you're the size of a bugger, they would appear to move much faster from a human's perspective, with scenes like Ozzie the dog moving very slow from MK's perspective being great to look at, and is probably the highlight of the film. With beautiful animation like this, I feel like this shows Blue Sky can do much more, even though we have to be bombarded with bad Ice Age movies with generic animation!

Characters: This movie clearly shows the flaws with Blue Sky when it comes to their characters: there are too many for us to care about and most are just there to get celebrity voice actors. MK was just OK. I didn't like Amanda Seyfried's acting (I like her as an actress, but she failed to impress me here) but I liked how MK dealt with everything around her like her mother's death and trying to save the pod. Nod just annoyed me. I don't know whether it was how he was written or Josh Hutcherson, but he was just too cocky for me to care about and his plot was predictable. Mandrake, the villain, is probably one of the most forgettable villains I have ever seen. He's just too cliched and reminded me way too much of Hades from Hercules, even though Christoph Waltz does a pretty good job. As for Mub and Grub, I expected to be really annoyed by them going in with all the advertising & trailers, but I unexpectedly found them funny. OK, they're not the funniest sidekicks ever and they're clearly trying to be like Disney animal sidekicks, but they made me chuckle a bit, thanks to Aziz Ansari and Chris O'Dowd's voice acting!

Noticing a pattern here?

Anyway, there's also Professor Bomba, who I found annoying and a bit of a dick to begin with ignoring his daughter whose mother just died, but what got me confused with him was whether or not he was meant to be a comedy relief because of his clumsiness, but at other times, he goes all serious when he realizes how stupid he's been for years obsessing over tiny people which cost him his marriage! Anyway, there's Queen Tara, who is pretty important to the plot, but I thought she was just there to get Beyonce's name on their ads! And she can't act! Yes, I know she was in other movies like Dreamgirls and The Pink Panther, but I never really thought she was cut out to be an actress, she should just stick to singing (which she thankfully is!) There's Bufo, who was entirely pointless besides Blue Sky having Pitbull's name on their ads and Nim Gallu, who's kind of helpful with the plot, but it's messed up with Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler's casting and obviously, he gets an entirely pointless musical number (I'll admit, it's pretty catchy)! Then there's the only character worth caring about, Ronin! Seriously, why wasn't the movie about him? He's a stoic Leafman warrior who's too serious about his job, but he's shown to be caring and is in love with Queen Tara. And Colin Farrell is probably the best out of the celebrities they got for this film!

Despite everything I've criticized, this movie is probably one of the better Blue Sky films with their best animation, and I'll give them credit that they tried to do a more serious story like Dreamworks did with Rise of the Guardians, and not just because of William Joyce's involvement. They show they can make some good characters, but they didn't put in enough effort for the ones we need to care about because they mostly focused on the celebrity voice actors and there are too many underdeveloped subplots and relationships which were unnecessary and took us away from the main plot. I'd recommend this for fans of Rise of the Guardians or Ferngully because the movie has the same pros and cons and it did leave me invested in the first 20 minutes.
Story: 4/10
Animation: 10/10
Characters: 5/10
Overall: 6/10