Movie Review: Epic

Epic is the story of a young girl, Mary Katherine (or M.K.) who is about sixteen or seventeen years old.  She is returning home to live with her father, whom she has not seen in years.  Her parents had split up and I got the impression her mother had died before the start of the film, which is what caused her to return home.

Her father is obsessed, to the point of total distraction, with finding proof that there are wood spirits or little people running about the lands around his home.  She is angered by her father’s continued obsession and desire to run off to investigate one of his monitors, despite the fact that she just arrived.  She gets ready to run away, including leaving a note to that effect, when she becomes caught up in the struggle of good versus evil (or life versus decay) that is taking place in the woods.

The Queen of the forest, Tara (played by Beyoncé), is what keeps the Boggans from spreading their decay and destroying the forest.  Queen Tara gives M.K. (whom she shrunk to a small size) a quest to protect the pod which will be the next queen.  With a pair of leafmen (the queen’s guards), she needs to take the pod to someone who can tell her want to do with it.

The movie is something of a coming of age story, where M.K,’s father, herself, and the leafman all have to grow and learn to become better people.  There are characters for kids and kid humor in many scenes.  However, there is less adult content than I had hoped.  I see many of the cartoons that come out, but only when they have a hint at adult subtleties and plot elements.  The movies aimed solely for kids I often avoid and after having seen it, I realized this one is on the cusp of that avoidance.

My biggest problem was the creation of primary plot driver, which is caused when the young leafman (who is rebelling against authority) and M.K. disobey the commandment to guard the pod so they can go explore on their own.  While I can see kids (or even myself) do something a little foolish under certain circumstances, I would expect sixteen or seventeen year old kids to have a slightly greater sense of responsibility when everyone it telling them if anything goes wrong, the world will end.  For M.K., her hopes of returning to a normal size hing on the pod, so she has a vested interest in making sure it stays safe.

I know it was a plot move to teach the kids about responsibility, but if it had been more subtle, the movie would have had more appeal to me.

For parents with small children, some of the characters are killed,  The violence is not graphic, but there is enough of it.

Despite my issue with the lack of subtlety in generating the plot elements to teach responsibility, I did enjoy the animation and would give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.