Ššš EPIC. Director: Chris Wedge. With the voices of Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Beyoncé, Colin Farrell, Christoph Waltz. Showing at: Nu Metro Walmer Park, the Boardwalk; Ster Kinekor Vincent Park, the Bridge

AS you watch its characters zoom through a lush forest on the backs of hummingbirds, the gorgeous 3-D adventure comedy Epic suggests a warmer, fuzzier Avatar , with a green heart.

Directed by Chris Wedge, the movie is a hymn to nature rendered in phantasmagoric detail as refined as anything I’ve seen in a computer-animated family film. But as beautiful as it is, Epic is fatally lacking in visceral momentum and dramatic edge.

The broad concept – the existence of a teeming, nearly invisible kingdom that is as vital and energised as the world discernible to the naked eye – was inspired by William Joyce’s children’s book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs.

Although it depicts a war between good and evil, Epic has no real savagery. The bad guys may be ugly, but they are not sadistic monsters, and the battles produce no visible carnage. The forest, despite its dangers, is welcoming.

Epic (from the creators of the Ice Age movies and Rio) is much better at visualising the woods and its residents than at constructing a resonant pop allegory. The best it can come up with is the motto “Many leaves, one tree,” about all things being connected.

You can read whatever else you like into a soothing fable for flower children that gently preaches that nature is good and its destruction bad. There is no suggestion of political axes being sharpened.

Living on the edge of the forest in a shack cluttered with gadgets is the eccentric scientist, Bomba (Jason Sudeikis), who has devoted his life to trying to prove the existence of this nearly invisible kingdom. The story begins when his spirited 17-year-old daughter, MK (Amanda Seyfried), strays into the forest to retrieve his three-legged pug, Ozzy, who has wandered off.

There she meets Ronin (Colin Farrell), the leader of the Leafmen, a corps of green-uniformed eco-warriors committed to saving the forest from the evil Boggans.

For reasons that are never specified, the not-so-fearsome leader of the Boggans, Mandrake (Christoph Waltz), is determined to destroy the forest and turn it into a putrid wasteland. The movie is too timid to ascribe his motives to development or oil exploration.

The Leafmen’s benign ruler, Queen Tara (Beyoncé Knowles), is a curvaceous, soft-voiced Glinda the Good whose 100-year reign will end when a flower pod bursts under a full moon to reveal the new queen. The Boggans are hellbent on capturing the pod and making sure that it opens in darkness, in which case they will have control of the territory. Caught up in the struggle, MK shrinks to 6cm in height when she enters the forest and befriends the Leafmen, who teach her to ride hummingbirds and execute acrobatic leaps. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she longs to find her way home but is distracted by the attentions of Ronin’s rebellious protege, Nod (Josh Hutcherson).

Gentle comic relief is provided by Tara’s shape-shifting sidekicks, Mub (Aziz Ansari) and Grub (Chris O’Dowd), a slug and a snail with extended eyeballs who care for the pod. For what it’s worth, Epic is on the side of the angels. Movie-meter (rating out of five stars): 5 – Top notch; 4 – Worth

the ticket; 3 – Average; 2 – Wishy washy; 1 – Save yourself.