Is it ever a good sign when a studio pushes a movie’s release back? By over a year? And then bumps it to its new streaming service? Granted, movie theaters are still largely closed in my neck of the woods and I’d think twice before going to one even if they weren’t. Well, that’s what happened to the movie version of Artemis Fowl, now out on Disney+ after being originally scheduled for theatrical release last year.
Well, it’s out now, and I read the first book in the series and everything to prep for it! Was it worth it?
Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw, Robert Shaw’s grandson) is a 12 year old genius, living in his wealthy father’s house. Artemis Fowl Sr. (Colin Farrell) is either an wealthy antiques dealer or a brilliant art thief. The movie never quite decides on that. When Artemis Sr. disappears, kidnapped by a mysterious hooded figure, Artemis has to find a fairy MacGuffin and deliver it to the hooded figure or else. What follows is a kidnapping of a fairy cop, a stand-off with other fairies, and a host of other things mostly centered around Artemis’s mansion with his only help coming from his bodyguard Dom Butler (Nonso Anozie) and Butler’s young niece Juliet (Tamara Smart). Can Artemis get his father back and outsmart the fairies before time runs out on multiple levels?
Well, yes he can. Obviously. It’s a Disney movie. But as far as adaptations go, this one is, well, rather loose. It has some plot points from the first novel along with some of the character relationships, but the movie made a number of changes, beyond making the cast more multi-ethnic and flipping a few genders around. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me, but the result here is something that, well, is rather dull. Artemis is a genius, but the book shows he has internal doubts about not being overly cruel while putting on a mask of a criminal mastermind, smarter than everyone else. The movie just shows the surface, making Artemis out to be something of a cocky jerk, and young Shaw isn’t a particularly strong actor. He comes across as wooden or a jerk. Sometimes both. The end result is while he could have been a likable central figure like Harry Potter, instead he’s got Hermione Granger’s smarts combined with Draco Malfoy’s entitled attitude for much of the movie, and quite frankly, many of his “smart” moments seemed more moderately clever than genius-level smart.
As for the rest of the cast, there’s Josh Gad as a large dwarf speaking in some kind of badly accented voice while Judi Dench’s fairy commander just speaks in a ridiculous one. Does someone have some photographic dirt on Judi Dench? Between this and Cats, she’s made some weird choices of late.
I did learn since watching the movie that some of the elements here actually came from the second book, and this movie does set up a sequel as the mysterious assassin is still out there and a mysterious presumably human government group knows some of the things, but Artemis Fowl’s movie was just so…dull. Not like crazy dull with a lot of weird stuff that just doesn’t work like Disney’s last live action young readers book adaptation A Wrinkle in Time. Director Kenneth Branagh seems to have just done this one for the paycheck. Whether or not Disney opts to make another, I don’t know that I would care enough to see it.
Grade: C-
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