Movie reviews: Epic

There’s a nice touch of self-deprecating humour to the title of the animated adventure Epic (G), which features all manner of swashbuckling and derring-do in a breathless save-the-world plot — except this world exists at the micro-level.

Teenager Mary-Katherine, aka MK (voiced by Amanda Seyfried) is still mourning the death of her mother when she comes to stay with her father, Professor Bomba (Jason Sudeikis), an eccentric scientist who has spent his entire career trying to prove the existence of the tiny humanoid creatures he believes populate the forest. As it happens, he’s right — the audience has already met the miniscule Leaf People, who are led by Queen Tara (Beyoncé Knowles) and her right-hand man, the warrior Ronin (Colin Farrell). Shrunk to the micro-level, MK finds herself embroiled in a war to the death between the forest-tending Leaf People and the Boggans, led by the evil Mandrake (Christoph Waltz), who wish to see the forest destroyed forever. Adapted from William Joyce’s children’s book The Leaf Men and the Brave Bugs, and directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age), Epic is a rollicking action-adventure tale that benefits hugely from a beautifully detailed depiction of a world that is generally invisible to the naked eye. It’s inventive, too — warriors zip into battle on their hummingbird steeds, lily pads double up as landing pads for a queen’s stately procession through the woods — and Chris O’Dowd, playing a snail with ambitions of glory, provides plenty of comic relief. Kids will likely be swept along by the pacy quest, although adults might find the voice talent a little staid — Colin Farrell is particularly flat in his delivery — while those who have seen Avatar might wonder if they’re experiencing déjà vu. That said, it’s a solidly constructed kids’ fable and there’s no faulting its underlying message about the importance of conserving our natural resources.

If you’re a stickler for detail you might want to avoid The Hangover Part III (15A), given that it doesn’t feature any actual hangovers. Instead, the “wolfpack” of Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are reunited when Alan’s selfish behaviour grows so destructive as to warrant an intervention. On the way to Arizona to deposit Alan in a therapeutic institution, the trio are kidnapped by Marshall (John Goodman) and ordered to track down their old foe, Mr Chow (Ken Jeong), who owes Marshall a cool $21m in gold bullion. Fans of the previous Hangover movies may well enjoy the trio’s subsequent (and many) reversals of fortune, given that much of the humour is derived from our familiarity with the characters and their personality quirks. Of course, that familiarity means that The Hangover III feels rather repetitive and predictable, and director Todd Phillips, helming a Hangover movie for the third time, seems unable to invest proceedings with any great urgency. Galifianakis, with his manic eyes a-twinkle behind the scruffy beard, gives his character a wired energy that carries the movie along, and his all-too-brief scenes with the excellent Melissa McCarthy provide the film with the very few moments when the movie rises above the franchise’s tired recycling of its previous highpoints to provide some genuine emotional connection.