Movie Review: 'Epic' is Just Average

To be fair, director Chris Wedge ("Ice Age," "Rio") has created a nature-based fantasy engaging enough that it will find an audience. Too bad he didn't bring his A game.

"Epic" qualifies for a solid C, which is still a passing grade, but if you brought that home to mom, she would be displeased. This over-plotted muddle with under-drawn characters is saved by a handful of well-defined personalities and the beautifully rendered environments in which they interact.

It doesn't help that Wedge has compared his newest flick with the grandiosity of "Star Wars" and "Avatar." While both of those incredibly successful movies demonstrated numerous breakthroughs in film technology, "Epic" fails to move the needle much — it actually shines a distracting light on the continued limitations of animating human characters with the complexity viewers are coming to expect.

Teenager Mary Katherine — or M.K., who is played by Amanda Seyfried of "Les Miserables" — is sent to live with her absent-minded professor of a dad who obsesses about a world of little forest creatures and humanoids that keep the positive forces of nature in sync. M.K. magically shrinks down to their size and is enlisted by the good guys to save their forest from evil forces that make all life wither and die. 

M.K. and her teen counterpart Nod — Josh Hutcherson of "Hunger Games" — are nicely developed characters with backstories that help connect them to the audience, making us care about the story's outcome. The forest baddies are led by Mandrake, played by the spectacular Christoph Waltz.

While some elements are reminiscent of "FernGully, "Avatar" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," there is enough new story and enough character development to allow "Epic" to stand on its own. But the weaknesses are hard to overlook.

The great editing found in "Rio," which created impressively tight pacing, is missing here. The story sequences often seem disjointed, and the timing is all over the place — sometimes appropriately fast-paced, sometimes lagging enough to make moments awkward when they shouldn't be. Some characters' relationships are not built enough for us to really get behind them.

The character animating and voicing is where the biggest problems lie. While the various flora and fauna of the forest are delightful, clever and, at times, inventive, the human characters — both from real life, like M.K and her father, and from forest life, like Ronin, Nod and Queen Tara — are way too under-drawn, almost to the level of video game avatars.

The speech is not well synched to the animation, a problem exacerbated by a mixed bag of voice acting.

Waltz creates another inspired villain, playing with his voice throughout, and further showing his range. Colin Farrell, Aziz Ansari and Chris O'Dowd are also inventive with their vocal choices.

But these are exceptions. The rest of the voiceovers range from merely passable to actively weak. Beyonce is particularly bland and non-descript. Since she plays the character who keeps the magic of the forest safe, that's a bit tragic. Steven Tyler as Nim Galuu is no doubt supposed to be trick casting, but just comes off sounding like an exhausted "Wavy Gravy" after a weekend at Woodstock.  

All of this is particularly unfortunate since animation has always been the place where the most talented voice actors could exhibit their best work. Even with Beyonce, Tyler, Farrell and Seyfried as stars, the filmmakers don't list them at the beginning of the film.

So many incredibly talented voice actors out there would have been able to build a bridge from the weak storyline and character animation, raising the quality of "Epic" significantly.

But this goes to show that hiring big names was not in the best interest of the film. The studios would do well to remember not every live actor can be as good vocally as John Goodman.

Will "Epic" be something movie fans number among their favorites and rush out to buy when it arrives on Blu-ray? Not likely. Will it be that lovely family matinee for a rainy Saturday, the kind that's been missing lately? It's certainly diverting enough and has enough bright spots to fit that bill.

"Epic" is now playing at Regal Ballston Common 12.