Fairy magic missing from ‘Artemis Fowl’
Disney’s “Artemis Fowl,” an expensive, ambitious special-effects fantasy, has spent years sitting somewhere as various release dates have come and gone before streaming Friday on Disney+.
It’s easy to see why this “Artemis Fowl” was troubled and presumably tinkered with.
It’s a complicated, uninteresting, overplotted and overpopulated saga with elves, fairies (who are dressed in what looks like marching band uniforms), goblins. There’s a hairy dwarf (Josh Gad) who looms as a tame version of Harry Potter’s giant Hagrid and who narrates.
Of course, there are humans. There’s even a huge troll who wreaks havoc at an Italian wedding (not quite sure why we’ve left Ireland for Italy).
Artemis (Ferdia Shaw) is introduced as a 12-year-old boy genius, a very serious kid with a bodyguard named Butler (Nonso Anozie), who lives in the impressive Fowl Manor, which as the film opens is the center of a media frenzy with reporters, satellite trucks and crowds covering the case.
Here we meet another Artemis Fowl (Colin Farrell), the widower father of our criminal kid. Yes, this is yet another Disney project with a dear departed dead mother.
And we haven’t even gotten to a raspy-voiced Judi Dench as General of the Fairies, a revenge-seeking hardcase with those distinctive fairy ears.
Poor Dame Judi, to follow “Cats” with this botched reunion with director Kenneth Branagh after “Murder on the Orient Express” and the Shakespearean tale “All is True.”
“Artemis Fowl” began — and continues — as a celebrated series of eight fantasy novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer. Disney has reportedly been working on the property since the dawn of the 21st century.
To be fair, family films of this ilk, with a steady stream of amazing creatures and numerous fantasy worlds created by computer generated effects, often forget the story in service to spectacle.
“Artemis Fowl” is targeted for the young, which accounts for its percolated pacing and various violently predictable battles. But it must also somehow interest the parents and adults who bring the kids and may feel, rightly in this case, they’ve seen it all before.
You have to wonder as “Fowl” drags on for its 90plus minutes if Gad’s bearded Mulch Diggums was added after test screenings to not just narrate but explain a story no one could (or would want to) follow.
You exit this supposedly magical sphere, knowing there will not be a sequel, much less a Harry Potterstyle series.