Friday, June 12, 2020

Film Review - Artemis Fowl (2020)

Artemis Fowl is directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh and is based off of the novel which tells the tale of young Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw) who is the son of Artemis Fowl Sr (Colin Farrell) who is taken prisoner by a mysterious being who demands a sacred Fairy artefact called the Acculus and young Mr Fowl is determined to find it to get his father back alive.

Artemis Fowl is sadly one of Disney’s not so good films and it is rare for them to stumble badly but when they do you know your watching one and given this went from a September 2019 Cinema Release to a release on its streaming service Disney Plus in June of 2020 its probably no surprise that they knew internally that this was a dud.

And it all boils down to the films screenplay which really reeks of a script written by a committee of people who have seen other films like Die Hard, Men in Black and Harry Potter and blended them together with elements of the source material and pasted it together in a script that has no real cohesion to it or any sense of being the product of a clear vision for this project that could excite anyone watching it as while your watching it you feel your watching a waste of great talent on your TV screen.

And Sir Ken Branagh is a good and capable director (I like his Henry V, Dead Again, Peters Friends, Thor and Cinderella movies quite fine) but it just feels like this time he’s trudging his way through this mudtrack of a screenplay that he can’t really seem to find a way to execute in a cohesive manner like he did with those other films I listed above and as for his actors well.

Dame Judi Dench sounds like she’s imitating a deep voice Irish woman who’s smoked one too many cigarettes in her day, Josh Gad comes across as a rip off of Hagrid from the Harry Potter films and his voice sounds like its imitating Robbie Coltrane from those films, Mr Farrell is clearly trying his best with his character while young Mr Shaw just comes across as a clone of Daniel Radcliffe.

As for the villain in this movie well there really isn’t one just some hooded nobody who has so little to do and has no real character or impact on this story you may as well as swap them out for Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget and frankly the movie would make more sense with him as the villain given how those scenes play out in the film.

And so that was Artemis Fowl and if this movie is any guide and has a lesson for Disney to learn (not that they have many to learn) its that they need their other live action divisions to learn from the success of the MCU where they have a clear and concise vision for what they want their films to be and they stick with it and see it through to the end not second guess themselves in a committee collective where so much is thrown into a script it never comes across as a cohesive film and given the capable talent in this movie its really disappointing, 1 out of 5.

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