EPIC Rated: PG

Barbara Says:

My friend and I played children and ran off to see the latest animation film. Guess what? We found a lot of other adults there too. The place had a great many kids for a Friday night also. So I was wondering if there would be the usual talking out loud or crying.  Not a sound. This movie is bright with color and flying creatures in 3-D.  For that alone it is worth your time but it is funny and sweet and thoughtful too.  The story is not new. It is about believing in another world going on around us in our gardens and our desire to see it.  It is about father and daughter being disconnected because of his desire to see that world and her not believing in it at all. Until,she is suddenly part of that world and the savior of it. We enjoyed this film for the  beautiful colors but the artistry of it all was beyond well crafted.  At the end of the credits it tells you that it took 1,000,000 hours to make and 2,000 people to craft it. In one word - Amazing. It also lets us know that if we do not learn to work together, we will all die together. That is my wish for the whole world-Learn to work together.  I give this a 9 out of 10 because it touched me (and a lot of children too because they were so quite).

Cat Says:

We went to go see Epic today. It was me, my 12 year old son and my friend with her 6 year old son. I had heard that the graphics were great and those who had seen it loved it but I wasn't all that excited to go see it. But, it's summer. The kids are bored and it's hot outside. So an air conditioned movie theater sounded like a great idea and it was time I could spend with my friend and her son. So I figured that even if the movie wasn't good, the time spent would be. 

Turned out the movie was good and the graphics are great! I still can't get over the scene where the Queen is stepping from lily pad to the small water plant leaves, walking across a pond, and it really looks like the leaves are slightly submerged under the water! And we were not watching the 3-D version of this movie! There are many other examples of how they got the forest, lighting, camera angles and all so perfectly but for me this was also a detractor because the characters were not rendered in the same way. I've seen better character graphics in low priced video games. So it was an odd combination for me...having the forest look so realistic and the characters so unrealistic. 

The story is like Avatar meets Honey I Shrunk the Kids meets Fern Gully. And it works. Tiny forest people are at a point in their civilization when the Queen must find an heir in the buds that grow in the pond or the forest will die. There are caretakers in the form of a slug and a snail to watch over the bud as well as a whole army of Leafmen to guard the Queen and the bud. There is also a whole army of bad guys who want to kill the Queen and steal the bud since legend says that if the bud blooms in darkness it will become ruler of the dark side and will destroy the forest forever. This event is complicated when a teen-aged human girl is sent to go live with her father, a scientist obsessed with proving the forest people exist, after her mother dies. The dad is distracted, the girl decides to leave and live on her own when she is derailed with her dog running off into the forest. Circumstances lead her to have to help the Queen, be shrunk down to size, meet and fall in love with the teen-aged ward of the Captain of the Leafmen and help save the day before she can return to her real size and return to her dad.

The girl, played by Amanda Seyfried, is not the wimpy character that many of these movies want the girl to be. She is a bit head strong and yet a very capable person. The boy, played by Josh Hutcherson, is written a bit too much to form. Head strong, yes, but too much of a screw up who sort of gets it together by the end. Old story, old characterization. Would have been nice to have seen a new spin on this character. The head of the Leafmen, played by Colin Farrell, was the perfect mix of strong, determined and rational with a side of true affection for his ward. The evil leader was played to evil perfection by Christoph Waltz. Always cracks me up when movies ignore the reality of killing off a main food source by the bad guy as being bad for the bad guy too! The Queen is played by Beyonce and it's a one note performance. Not her fault but the fault of the writers to keep this character so one dimensional. The most fun characters are the slug and snail, played by Aziz Ansari and Chris O'Dowd and the local soothsayer played by Steven Tyler. I think his character is my favorite. Tons of fun to watch.

The story is the usual save the world story. I really just require all to end well for the "good" side and all to end very badly for the "bad" side and this movie meets that criteria very well. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. I would recommend seeing it on the big screen for the graphics. So if you and the kids are having the summer we are having take them to go see Epic. Both adults had a good time, the 6 year old loved it and the 12 year old thought it was pretty good. Very worth the time in the air conditioning!