With epic visuals, this animated adventure while never fantastic is a fun movie that the youngster should enjoy. I would place it in the realms of an above average DreamWorks movie and a middle of the line Pixar film, which is an achievement for Blue Sky who are beginners in the animated film game.
Suzanne: 4 out of 5
I thought for a kids movie that it was truly Epic. I think I love kids movies more than your average 22 year old though. Blue Sky is an up and coming company that you should watch out for. They did one of my favorite animated movies Rio.
Overview
The heroic adventure known as Epic is two intertwining stories one big in scale the other small. It starts with a teenager named M.K (Amanda Seyfried) comes to live with his slightly crazy father Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) who believes small people live in the forest and run the ecosystem. Cue the Leaf Soldiers and their leader Ronin (Colin Farrell) who are in an age long war with the Boggans and their leader Mandrake (Christoph Waltz). When the two collide with the shrinking of M.K, the adventure kicks into high gear.
Visuals
Trey: This would be the only part of the movie I would really consider Epic, it was extremely impressive. I am not going to say it is exactly at the level as say How To Train Your Dragon but the animation itself isn't the only great visual aspect. It's the way the forest looked and the people moved, the way the Leaf Soldiers fought the Boggans it was gorgeous. I have also heard from other reviewers that the 3d was actually pretty great as well, great job to the animation team and the writers for making some extremely impressive scenes.
Suzanne: The visuals in this movie were really quite amazing. It drew me in more than anything in the movie. The forest was beautiful, the characters were creative and gorgeous, and the colors overall were just spectacular. I somewhat wish that I would have seen the movie in 3D because like Trey said I heard that the 3D was great. My favorite visual part was the Leaf Men in the movie, they were a vibrant green and their costumes, if you can call it that for an animated character, were stunning. They were very detailed and clever and I loved that.
Audio and Score
Trey: The score was your basic adventure like an upbeat Lord Of The Rings score. Which helped the action while complimenting the whole film. The sound effects seemed pretty spot on and there wasn't many of the ridiculous noises for the purpose of a laugh. All in all not memorable but did the film justice.
Suzanne: I have to be honest, I didn't really notice the music at all in this movie. I guess that could be good and bad, good because that means it wasn't a horrible sound track, and bad because that means it wasn't memorable. Sorry, that's all I can really say about it.
Voice Acting
Trey: There was 3 characters that I enjoyed far more than the rest, they would be Grub and Mub the snail and slug comedic combo that really helped me enjoy the film. Grub is voiced by IT Crowd star Chris O'Dowd and Mub is voiced by comedian Aziz Ansari. The other would be Colin Farrell as Ronin who was a complete bad-ass. I can't say enough for how well they each did in their respective roles which made up for the more sub par performances. Those being everyone else pretty much. I am not by any means saying they were bad, I just didn't care for them.
Suzanne: I thought the voice acting was pretty spot on in this movie. Amanda Seyfried (M.K.), was the main girl in the movie and I thought she did a great job. I've heard that voice acting is hard but I don't really have any experience so I wouldn't know. As for the other characters the ones I enjoyed the most were Ronin, Grub, and Mub. The best voiced character in the movie was Ronin, voiced by Colin Farrell. He already has a naturally awesome accent and the worked really well with the bad ass character he was playing in the movie. The man who played Grub, Chris O'Dowd, did the second best voice wise. He brought comedy to the movie and his lines were great. He also has a naturally awesome accent that also worked great with his character which was a snail. Finally we come to Mub, played by Aziz Ansari. In the trailer I didn't really like his character but in the movie he was pretty funny. He was the fourth best in my opinion after M.K. mainly because he was trying to be funnier than he was. But overall the voice acting in this movie was great.
Story
Trey: I like the way the two stories intertwined, and the pacing flowed very smoothly without any hiccups. There wasn't any twist and turns and the underlying theme of preserving nature is something that is pretty common in films. I would have liked a little more surprises and something fresh to really make it standout. However I was pretty much given Honey, I Shrunk The Kids mixed with Thumbelina. It just never felt all that original besides the look of the scenes and the action sequences. It needed to bring something new to the table to push it into a top tier animated film.
Suzanne: I loved the story, I thought it was really original and creative. I thought it was emotional when it needed to be and funny when it needed to be which made the story very enjoyable. I like what Trey said about it being underlying to nature being killed because I never thought of it that way. It really is the struggle of nature against everything that it killing it which is pretty deep for a kids movie. The action was great in the movie along with the slower scenes too. It was a great animated movie and I think kids, along with goofy 22 year olds like me, will really enjoy it.
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