Epic Movie Review

There’s nothing terribly epic about Epic, which feels more familiar than momentous. It echoes forest-battle tropes from FernGully and Avatar and boasts a visual palette reminiscent of A Bug’s Life. But what it lacks in uniqueness it makes up for with its simple enjoyment factor.

In the animated adventure, Beyoncé voices (almost too recognizably) Queen Tara, a powerful nature goddess who enlists a magically shrunken-down teen named M.K. (Amanda Seyfried), a slug-snail wise-guy duo (Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd), and a battalion of hummingbird-riding tiny men to defeat the evil forces that threaten to destroy their verdant world. It’s actually refreshing that this movie about saving a forest doesn’t have an explicitly environmentalist lesson.

The bad guys here, led by Mandrake (Christoph Waltz), aren’t greedy humans but a swarm of ugly flying insects with the ability to cause decay but with only vague motivations for destruction. The point is to ooh and ah at the airborne chase scenes and laugh at the funny fat slug.

Epic isn’t quite destined for the ?Again, again!? re-watchability of some of the Pixar classics, but for a satisfying explosion of color on a lazy summer day, it does the trick. B+