Review: 'Epic', featuring the voices of Beyonce and Josh Hutcherson

Blue Sky Studios is back in the theaters again with another CG animated feature for the masses. After dominating the box office with Ice Agesequel after Ice Age sequel it seems like Blue Sky is taking a chance with an adventure tale with Epic. This is a gamble for them because besides their main franchise their other main successes are also comedies staring talking animals. Now with this in which they are selling story that seems to be heavily inspired by The Borrowers but mixed with fantasy of Lord of the Rings. As cool as that sounds Blue Sky didn’t succeed at giving this to the audience.

Epic is about a teenage girl named Mary Katherine who prefers to go by M.K., who comes to live with her estranged father Professor Bomba. Professor Bomba is obsessed with what he believes is a society of miniature people who protect the forest, and has cameras and contraptions to keep surveillance on the forest to find proof of them. Because of his obsession with his work he neglects his daughter and she decides to leave.  While attempting to leave she follows her father’s dog into the forest and ends up getting magically shrunken and meets the Leaf Men, the society her father has been looking for. She ends up as a crucial part of a battle between the Leaf Men and their enemies the Boggans for the future of the Forest.

So let’s start with what works in Epic. One of the strongest things in the movie is that the art direction throughout is strong. From the character designs of the Leaf Men and human characters, to the environments and settings, all of it is top notch in conception. It fuses western and Japanese anime influences to create a unique look that doesn’t feel like other CG animated features we’ve seen before. Also this movie has some of the best light and lighting effects out of any CG animated film that has been released in recent years. The filmmakers really captured sunlight well in terms of its volume in space and brightness and how it affects one’s vision.

Now on to what really didn’t work in Epic. The first and biggest issue is the story. They never really sell the how and why of M.K.’s importance to the Leaf Men. The story just jumps around and forces a lot of things to happen to get them from point A to point B, instead of letting characters dictate what happens next. The reasons why the Boggans threaten the forest are never explained once and the leader of the Boggans, Mandrake, changes his goal about three times during the course of the movie. It’s hard to follow for an adult let alone a child. Another bad thing in this movie is Beyoncé as Queen Tara. While it’s possible she could do a great job in a voice acting role something is off here. The character’s animations and facial animations really don’t match up well with Beyoncé’s vocal performance and it’s really off-putting to more astute fans of animation. It makes you feel like the vocal director dropped the ball on this one.

So really as you can see the bad outweighs the good here. There is better all-ages fare coming out later this summer. Maybe Blue Sky Studios put their B Team on this while they are making another Ice Age or Dr. Seuss adaptation. This movie is at best a home video rental and not something you should sit through on your holiday weekend. If this movie is Epic at anything it’s in letting the audience down.