EAT • SLEEP • REVIEW • REPEAT
ARTEMIS FOWL
Neither fairy nor fowl.
Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight. It really wasn’t too long ago that young adult fantasy was the toast of Hollywood. But as times, tastes, and teenagers changed, so too did the YA landscape.
While successful young adult movies are certainly still out there, diminishing returns from the Divergent and Twilight sagas and dismal attempts to milk the cash cow with stuff like Percy Jackson, made it clear the fantasy arm of the YA sub-genre was fading fast. For any film franchise targeting an ever-evolving teenage audience, tone is everything, and a crucial factor many of the genre’s worst examples fail to grasp.
As a studio who’ve spent a good portion of their existence appealing to a young, fantasy-hungry audience, you’d think Disney would have an advantage in the YA game, but the recent stumble of A Wrinkle in Time and their eagerness to dump Artemis Fowl directly onto Disney+ suggests the House of Mouse are just as susceptible to young adult missteps as the rest of them.
In a desperate attempt to locate his missing father (Colin Farrell) and a priceless magical artefact known as the Aculos, 12-year-old genius Artemis Fowl Jr. (Feria Shaw) finds himself embroiled in a battle against an army of formidable underground fairies. Convinced that they are the ones behind his father’s disappearance, Artemis must call upon all his smarts and cunning to take on his fantastical foe and reunite his family before it’s too late.
There’s no nice way of saying this. Artemis Fowl is pretty damn awful. Falling short of the required level to please either franchise newbies or book fans, the film rings terribly hollow.
Reeking of corporate interference, Artemis Fowl is neither the film it wants or professes to be, as the usually steady hand of Disney stalwart Kenneth Branagh is unable to rescue the hand that he’s been dealt. As a director renowned for adding warmth and humanity to even the biggest franchise IPs, Branagh has been undermined by those at Disney wanting the film to be something it’s clearly not, and while his stints on Thor and Cinderella have represented highwater marks in his directorial career, Artemis Fowl is a true low point.
Coming in at a surprisingly slender 95 minutes, what could’ve been a bright and breezy fantasy adventure ends up lightweight, hacked to bits, and severely lacking in anything resembling substance. Sliced and diced to the point that it’s neither entertaining nor works as a coherent piece of storytelling, Artemis Fowl clearly had grand ambitions to match the source material at one point, yet comes up way short.
As we spend an inordinate amount of time farting around (the admittedly impressive) Fowl Manor with Artemis Jr. and gang, it’s hard not to feel short-changed by the film’s shocking lack of magic. Sure, there are fairies, trolls, and dwarves galore, yet this is nothing but fantasy window dressing that fails to make up for the disappointing shortfall in imagination and adventure.
While there are certainly some nice touches here and there, they are either all too brief or saturated in so much CGI that they swiftly become a turnoff. Perhaps the most intriguing of these is Haven City, the underground fairy dwelling that feels ripe for exploration, yet is left so woefully underdeveloped and CGI-drenched that it falls completely flat.
For a film not short on star power, perhaps Artemis Fowl’s biggest crime is its total waste of the talent at its disposal. Despite Judy Dench absolutely slaying it through a script trying to trip her up at every turn – and after Cats, you have to wonder whether Dame Judy owning absolute garbage has become its own must see sub-genre – the remainder of the cast are either underutilised or sold agonisingly short.
As one of the only members of the ensemble to come out of this with any credit, Nonso Anozie is pretty kick-ass as Artemis’ all-action bleach blonde sidekick, however, regarding the film’s big names, Colin Farrell is barely in the film enough to warrant a mention, while Josh Gad’s greatest contribution is to dig a tunnel by eating dirt then shitting it out. And yes, that looks just as stupid as it sounds.
As far as the film’s lead is concerned, there’s a lot resting on the young shoulders of Ferdia Shaw, yet he’s undermined by a god-awful script and the film’s complete lack of coherence. As someone thrown in at the deep end in his debut feature, there’s some sympathy for the lad, but his character’s complete lack of personality and charisma is a major hinderance for a book series that puts a lot of onus on the roguish charm of Artemis Fowl.
The film’s complete lack of focus means that Artemis isn’t even the protagonist in his own film, and while the character isn’t exactly intended to be a loveable hero, he’s so obnoxious that any form of audience connection is impossible. Built up to be somewhere between Bond, Tony Stark, and Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl Jr. ends up a charmless mess that fails to find a personality of his own.
Unrepentantly excruciating, the lacklustre dialogue doesn’t help matters, as the whole thing descends into a never-ending stream of dull exposition, trite conversations, and lame jokes. As the epitome of this, Josh Gad’s gravel-gargling voiceover that frames the entire thing insists on repeatedly and lazily overexplaining the plot to breaking point.
Flimsy and downright dull, Artemis Fowl’s plot aims for a Bond-meets-Potter vibe, yet misses the boat completely. Confusing despite its overt simplicity and ultimately forgettable, the narrative cobbles together elements from several different books, a move that will likely anger fans while bamboozling those new to the franchise.
With limitless potential and high hopes, Artemis Fowl fails to live up to even the low standards of recent YA fantasy adaptations. With a dull and incomprehensible script that’s only real achievement is to make 95 minutes feel like 3 hours, and a woefully underserved cast, the film falls way below the usual high standards of the rock-solid directorial talents of Kenneth Branagh. Undermined by a thoroughly unlikable lead, flat fantasy elements, and a messy plot that has corporate fingerprints all over it, you can clearly see why Disney chose to bury Artemis Fowl on their streaming service, as they fail to work their magic on yet another potential franchise not called Marvel or Star Wars.
