I couldn’t believe that the same people who brought us Ice Age and Scrat, the hilarious pre-historic squirrel, were the same ones who did Epic. They simply looked like so many dark bodies limned by intermittent moonlight. But it was so dark it was hard to distinguish friend from foe and who was doing what to whom. The final battle between the Leafmen and the Boggans was a night scene where the future of the forest lay with a small pod which had to bloom by moonlight. Oh, man, is that reaching!! Then there is the Yellow Brick Road, which in Epic is a trail of snail slime. This, in turn, would make Queen Tara a kind of Glinda the Good Witch Mary Katherine (or MK), a kind of pseudo Dorothy and MK’s ancient, disgusting, one-legged pug a kind of Toto.
There’s a touch of “Wizard of Oz” in Nim Galuu (Steven Tyler), the six-armed caterpillar scroll keeper who does magic tricks and tries to keep everyone in high spirits. But this was equivalent to a little syrupy-voiced beauty queen trying to convince General Schwarzkopf to loosen up while under siege by desert rats. It might have worked if done right and in the right circumstances. She was constantly trying to get the grim commander to smile and loosen up. Her teasing of Leafman leader Ronin, whose job was to protect both his queen and the entire forest from the bad guys called Boggans, was ludicrous. The character of Queen Tara was as silly as a seven-year-old at her first pajama party. A really great big YUK.Īnd speaking of yuk, the one-legged family dog was disgusting rather than funny, and will appeal to 10-year-old boys, as will the slugs who try to be cool in an icky and totally grody, non-humorous way. But the attempt to cook up half-way believable human emotions descended into simply high fructose corn syrup. The story made stabs at addressing current family relationship problems, both in the big people world of the “stompers”, and in the little people world of the forest - big person teenager Mary Katherine, or MK (Amanda Seyfried) with her father, the eccentric science professor (Jason Sudeikis) and little person teenager, Nod (Josh Hucherson), with his guardian and Leafman commander, Ronin (Colin Farrell). Saturday morning cartoon voices are more animated. The actors had nothing to work with and it showed. But I hardly blame the actors who provided the voices, though Beyonce Knowles (Queen Tara) is obviously no actress if this is any indication of her ability.
What it lacked was a script and voices that fit the characters. Epic had it all in the way of animation - vivid, luscious color and remarkable creativity and imagination.
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