Movie Review: Artemis Fowl (2020)
Synopsis: Artemis Fowl always believed the stories his dad told him about faeries and other mystical creatures were just fiction. However, when his dad is taken hostage over a mysterious magical object, Artemis finds himself facing a fairy army in an attempt to locate the treasure and rescue his father.
Review: It had been a while since we watched a movie together as a family and, since the various trailers we've seen about this film looked interesting, this wound up being my pick. As it turns out, this was a mistake.
To put this bluntly - WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, DISNEY?
I think the best way to describe this film is it was as though whoever wrote the script glanced at the books, picked out bits and pieces that sounded interesting and slapped those parts together without putting them in the proper context. The end result was a movie that looked like it might have had the potential to be good but wound up being a complete and total mess.
One of the biggest problems with this movie is there just wasn't any sort of "wow" factor. This is the kind of movie that should have had the main protagonist going on an adventure to exotic locations, like the underground fairy community (which admittedly looked kind of cool). Instead, he never leaves his house. In fact, he even rescues his father from the comfort of his own living space (sorry for the spoiler but, in all honesty, it doesn't really matter). It made me wonder if maybe this COVID pandemic prevented additional filming or, perhaps, Disney realized they had a stinker and decided not to invest any more money into it than they needed to.
My oldest daughter's biggest complaint was the lack of character development. Artemis (Shaw) was surprisingly boring for a main character, mostly because the movie only gave us glimpses of his potential. One of the other characters, Juliet (Tamara Smart), is introduced as a 12-year-old bad ass with awesome martial art skills and then is given very little screen time after that. In fact, I'm not even sure why they bothered to include her considering she wound up being as massive of a disappointment as the rest of the film.
Final Opinion: If you've never read the books, don't bother watching this movie because you'll just be confused. If you have read the books, don't bother watching this movie because you'll only be disappointed and/or angry. In other words, don't bother watching this movie because it isn't worth your time.
My Grade: F
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