Gorgon Reviews

A lot of work went into the PR for After Earth. The first trailer was pretty epic on its own right, but quickly got old the third time seeing it in theaters. But one thing you will notice is that outside of the trailers, the director information has been kept a bit secret. M. Night Shyamalan, famous director that people love to hate, has his name in small font on the posters. It is like they don’t even trust the director.

I think the film might be enjoyable as long as the main star doesn’t die in the first 20 minutes leaving only his son to do all the heavy lifting.

I was going to make an inference from this picture, but mmm, volcano. After Earth takes place in…the future! Surprising, I know. Mankind messed up Earth, forcing us to leave and Earth evolved without us. Unfortunately, the new place we moved to had deadly creatures as well. Creatures that were blind, but could smell fear and would go on a killing rampage against humans. Great new planet! Well, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) was the first soldier able to conquer his fear, making himself invisible to the creatures and helping us take back the planet!

Now he is a decorated soldier and lead commander of the armed forces. His son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), can’t even crack the ranger squad. In an attempt to bring them closer together, Cypher brings his son a simple transport mission which unfortunately runs into a freak teleporting asteroid storm, of some sort? The ship crashes down on a strange planet, killing everyone but our father son pair. Cypher has broken both of his legs, and the homing beacon is in the tail half of the plane, 100km across the planet.

Of course, it is Earth they have crash landed on. The wildlife there have evolved to take out human life! Even worse, the ship was transporting one of those blind “smell fear” creatures, who most certainly got loose on the planet and is looking for blood. Yay!

Oh hey, there he is, near the finale of the film. How convenient! Well, the good news is that Will Smith survived the crash. The bad news is, he didn’t really do anything in the film! His character gets to be a stoic commander, devoid of all emotion, which means he doesn’t have to do much in the way of acting. Just a lot of grimaces, and slowly talking to his son over an intercom.

Yes, After Earth is basically Will Smith trying to turn his son Jaden Smith into an action star. Which is fine, but people don’t like being duped into expecting an action movie with Will Smith as an action hero, and instead getting an “action movie” with Will Smith on the side. Speaking of action, I would define this movie’s genre of “Sci-Fi Drama Adventure”, as there wasn’t really much action. A lot of running away from Jaden’s character. So yeah, in addition to the ruse, we have a bit of a boring movie.

This isn’t even taking into account the recent theories that this movie is also a vehicle for Scientology. But I won’t get into that. I don’t care if movies are secretly religious, in fact, I liked Battlefield Earth. I thought it was hilarious.

After Earth turns out to be very predictable, giving nothing new to the genre. For those worried about the director, he really isn’t the problem with this movie, and there are secret twists to worry about. The problem is just the entire concept.

1 out of 4.

Why did I watch Blue Valentine?

Well for one, I need to see all the Ryan Gosling movies. I am teaching labs in the fall that will be 95% women and I need to be able to relate to them.

The second reason is the director, Derek Cianfrance, who also directed The Place Beyond The Pines this year, which I loved and also had Gosling in. So hell yeah, I trust this guy. Maybe too much.

Dude busted out a ukulele. Who isn’t swooning right now?

Basically, I think of this film as an experiment. If we make Ryan Gosling an alcoholic scumbag charmer, will women still love him?

I actually forgot I saw a trailer for this movie a few years ago, and it is a cute one. The first half of it is from the scene from the picture above, and it just makes you want to see the movie.

Blue Valentine is about Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dan (Gosling). Originally Dan was just a mover, and he met Cindy while she was visiting her Grandmother at an old folks home. Sure, she had a boyfriend, but its Ryan Fucking Gosling. So they have sex, oh no pregnancy, time to get married.

Years later, Ryan Gosling looks like a strange Jason Lee as Earl. Their marriage is falling apart. No love, no communication, potentially loving other suitors. But they have a daughter. Can either of them change to have a successful relationship?

Oooh, there’s the blue.

In 2001, Michelle Williams became attached to the script, and in 2003, Ryan Gosling. That is right after The Notebook Ryan Gosling. Why did it take six years? Well, originally the director wanted to film the young and old scenes several actual years apart, very cool idea. But that didn’t happen, they were just poor and needed a long time to get funding.

The movie itself is all sorts of depressing. Usually that means someone dies, and hey, no one dies at the end. It is just too realistic of a failing marriage where neither side can save it, and it is sad. I didn’t cry or anything, I just felt bad.

So if you like feeling bad, guess what, you might love this movie!

I thought this movie was incredibly well acted, but not complete soul crushing/depressing enough for my normal perfect score. I was a bit confused as the movie isn’t told in order, there are the two plot lines of when they first meet and get together, to many years later when they have a child. I thought it was somewhat hard to follow early on, but halfway through everything was a lot clearer.

I bet this film didn’t get as much attention, because people don’t like the Gosling who drinks too much, they like the one who says Hey Girl.

3 out of 4.

Whew, this might be one of the longer reviews I have put off writing. After I saw Pawn, I meant to write it later that night. Then I probably wandered off and fell into a movie coma.

Then I kept watching more and more movies, so although Pawn was on my list to write I kept just picking different movies to write about instead.

Well, eventually laziness catches up to all of us. Not to mention making sure I write it before I forget basically everything.

Hover over this image. What do you see? You see that I am really fucking clever.

Basically, Pawn tries to turn a simple robbery into a complicated game of cat and mouse. Like Derrick (Michael Chiklis) is British. That on its own is pretty complicated. He has a group of thugs, and for whatever reason they are slowly robbing a night time diner. They came in early, but the safe is time sensitive so it will only open at a certain time every night. Shit. Looks like they just have to play it cool.

Hard to do that when customers are frightened, and random cops (Forest Whitaker) come strolling in. There is also Nick (Sean Faris), who is on parole, and looking to get his life back on track for his wife (Nikki Reed) and kid. Last thing he wants to do is get mixed up in any wrong doing. We also have Charlie (Stephen Lang), the owner who is getting far too old for this shit.

And who can forget fucking Ray Liotta? Ray Liotta is some sort of evil guy, but just who he is working for is the bigger question.

Basically, everyone is an asshole, and everyone might have secret motives for either being there that night, or what they are out to get. There are some things far more important than money.

Like good old fashioned bromance.

Well, in movie terms, this one has plenty of twists and turns, but not enough to make you annoyed. Again, everyone seems to be playing a game, except for our hero Nick (good name), who is unfortunately caught up in this. Doesn’t help that his brother works in Internal Affairs. Lot of cops hate those guys. Lot of crooked cops in this town too.

I actually enjoyed parts of this movie for what it was, but overall it is just an average movie. Chiklis had a pretty bad British accent. The ending is hard to remember, mostly because it seemed really silly. Similarly, not all of the plot twists made complete sense.

I do think this film could have used more chess references though.

2 out of 4.

I am proud to say that I actually saw Despicable Me in theaters. Yes, now I see everything in theaters, but in 2010, it was rare as shit. But I was like hey, those yellow things look cute. Let’s watch the movie!

I figured I should probably write a review on it now, with the sequel coming out later this summer. Did you know know about Despicable Me 2? I find that impossible. Their ads have been everywhere since January at least. Open your eyes people.

Yeah, your eyes like you were on a roller coaster.

Gru (Steve Carell) is an evil genius mastermind! Trust me, he is wicked evil. The best at being a villain of all time. How do you know? Because he says so, and he has minions! Little tiny yellow minions, that are awesome. They speak inaudibly and they are the main selling point of this movie, really.

Either way, he isn’t so cool anymore. Some young upshot villain named Vector (Jason Segel) (because he has magnitude AND direction) has stolen the great pyramids. Yeah, what a dick. Now Gru feels inadequate and has to one up them by stealing the moon. Jeez. But he can’t get a loan from the Bank Of Evil / Mr. Perkins (Will Arnett) without a shrink ray in development, so he steals one! Success! Vector steals it from him though. Damn.

So Gru gets the idea to adopt three little girls, make them go to Vector’s house to sell cookies, so he can sneak in and grab the gun back. Then he can dump the kids off later. But they are rambunctious individuals. Ballet. School. Amusement parks. They are hard to take care of, especially when he isn’t cut out to be a parent. But then he learns…to love. Russell Brand plays Dr. Nefario, the scientist that works for Gru.

Aw shit yeah, I forgot I can have gifs on here. Look at how cute those fuckfaces are.

Did I mention I love the yellow minions? Yeah. Most people do. But that is about all I liked from the movie. The plot was a bit forced for me, and not at all exciting. Obviously it was all about him and the little girls, and obviously the girls were there to mostly be a thorn in his side, but actually learning to care for them in like, a day? How the heck did that work?

I just. I just can’t explain it. I re-watched it and was bored the entire time. Maybe the kids were all too young and that bugged me? Why can’t one of them have been more teenager-y? The oldest is close. But not too close. This was the first feature of Illumination Entertainment, who later gave us the bad Hop and the disappointing Lorax. I in general prefer these awesome sexy CGI animated movies to give us more realistic people, instead of the overextended ones (like Dreamworks tends to do).

Yeah. I know. I think people like this movie just for the minions and I am an old curmudgeon.

1 out of 4.

When doing my “What random shit should I review in between new releases?” run, I walked by Rampart and knew I had to watch it immediately. There is only one reason I know about this movie, and that is because of its horrible PR campaign to promote it.

Basically, on Reddit, Woody Harrelson did an ask me anything before this movie came out. Yes to promote it, but he apparently forgot it was an ask me anything. He only wanted to answer questions about the movie, ignored basically everything else, answer only a dozen or so questions, and most of them badly. One response he said “…i consider my time valuable.” So, the internet was scorned, lots of boycotts against seeing the film, and now no one really knows anything about it.

Don’t fuck with the internet?

Basically, that hobo is the internet, and Woody Harrelson is Woody Harrelson. This is based on the Rampart Scandal. What is that? Exactly. In the 1990s, the Rampart Scandal involved evidence of the LAPD having huge amounts of corruption and misconduct. Over 70 officers were found guilty of being dicks and abusing their power. Pretty serious deal.

Like Dave Brown (Harrelson). He hates everyone equally, so he feels like its okay for him to be a bigoted, racist, sexist, scumbag who beats his perps. I mean, he murdered a serial date rapist. That makes him a good guy right?

Well, he lives with his two ex wives (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon). Both of them are sisters, both had a kid with him. Yep, very scumbag.

But a video surfaces of Dave beating up a person who got into a car accident with him. He says it was assault with a deadly weapon, the people think otherwise. This leads to a bigger investigation, and more potential bad stuff Dave has done. They want a forced retirement, he wants to fight it. Silly Dave.

Also featuring Ice Cube, Sigourney Weaver, and Ben Foster.

Do you hear that? That silence? Yeah, those are the fans.Good thing the internet chose to boycott this movie. After all, if they didn’t, we’d have all went and seen it, giving them money, then hating it afterwards. Better to hate it before hand, because an actor doesn’t know how to internet, I guess.

Woody actually did a lot for this role apparently (according to the AMA). Lost weight, had to get in a new psyche of a complete asshole. But I would say most of his recent roles have been assholes to some degree anyways. I can’t imagine it was that hard.

Basically, the movie is just kind of boring. Drama with some action elements. I like dramas! I understand their pacing. This one was not done well is all.

Unfortunately, it will be remembered for all of eternity, as that one movie that pissed people off, not by the content of its character, but by the way it advertised its colors.

1 out of 4.

Some people think Jim Carrey is just a slapstick comedian way past his prime. But those who defend him always note that he doesn’t only do silly and zany movies. The two people talk about the most are The Majestic and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and to a lesser extent The Truman Show. (I am not saying The Truman Show is bad, just that it is still kind of silly. I love it!). But if they want to go a darker path, they will bring up The Number 23, the only “horror”-esque movie he has done. Horror is a very strong term, it is clearly just an eerie thriller.

But after hearing people bring it up, I knew it was my duty to watch it. One day (yesterday). Is it worthy of the praise of the other two films.

Let’s face it, you’d rather watch the movie over read the book right?

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is a pretty normal guy. Has a wife (Virginia Madsen) and kid (Logan Lerman). He is an animal control officer, basically the coolest job ever (outside of putting down animals sometimes. And the fact that it sucks).

Yep. His life is good. His wife finds the book The Number 23 in the book store, likes it herself, and gives it to her husband as a gift. Which is when things start to get weird for him.

He notices similarities between the main characters childhood and his own. Neighbors were described the name, his mother died the same time as another character in the story. His wife thinks he is reaching of course, because he is nothing like the main character, Detective Fingerling. (Heh). He doesn’t play the sax, doesn’t solve crime, and isn’t a detective. But once they introduce the number 23, and how a character in it becomes obsessed with the number, finding it everywhere in their lives, he too start to find it everywhere in his life. He even begins to dream of killing his wife, scaring him so much he gets a hotel to finish the novel and figure out why it is so dang similar.

Too bad the novel ends at chapter 22, with the detective about to take his own life. What a shame. Maybe the novel is a confession and he just has to figure out who the murderer actually is, not some silly pseudonym?

Who ruins a good wall like that? Bunch of savages in this town.

Well, for those people who point to this film to prove that Jim can be a great actor, I suggest they stop. They are doing a disservice to Jim. After all, he CAN be a great actor. Hell, even Mr. Popper’s Penguins wasn’t complete horseshit thanks to Jim. He has gotten older, and he is kicking ass when he wants to, but The Number 23 is not his best work.

Jim gets to play both Walter and his visions of the Detective in the movie, believing he truly is the star of the book despite the differences. The book is in a dark noir style, but skips around a lot, and basically involves him go crazy, while Walter goes crazy in real life (and drags his son into it). But the number 23 thing, the main plot of the film and title, is really the most important thing. I bet if I looked it up, I would find a lot of factual errors in terms of the facts they gave and what equaled 23. I heard a few in their quick ramblings that just werent true, which is annoying. Did they fact check their facts? (Or is to show that the characters were reaching for more 23s and making up things? How meta).

Either way, it is a strange movie that didn’t improve my life in any way. The only trivia question I can see in it is “What number does Jim Carrey become obsessed with in film?” Ah. 23. Done.

1 out of 4.

After Fast Five premiered, there was a lot of talk about the future of the franchise thanks to the scene in the credits. It left many people confused. How could Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) be alive, when she clearly died in The Fast and The Furious?

We will get to that later. More importantly, the time line of the films became more clear.

They mentioned that Fast & Furious 6 (Trailer) would follow 5, and part 7 would be set AFTER Tokyo Drift. Basically, films 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the series are in the correct order, and 3 is set after 6, but before 7. They also went through a little bit of development hell, where they were going to break 6 into two parts, but thankfully went back to just one film. Either way, the questions you have at the end of 6 will be answered next summer when part 7 comes out.

I don’t give a fuck about any of that, because HOLY SHIT A TANK! Long story short, there is a highly tactical gang of drivers out there in Europe, who are trying to assemble a device that can shut down an entire city for 24 hours. That is a pretty dangerous weapon and could kill a lot of people. Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his new partner Riley (Gina Carano) know the only people who can help them out are a group of lesser international criminals on the run from the law.

Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) obviously refuse to help, but when Hobbs shows pictures of Letty, his love who they thought died years ago, they assemble the team (Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Sung Kang, and Gal Gadot) to find out how this picture exists and if she is really alive. Saving the world isn’t on their mind, just finding the girl.

But with Shaw (Luke Evans) being a criminal master mind, always a few steps ahead of the authorities, can their rag tag group even follow in their exhaust fumes?

Of course the women have to fight each other. Gender equality people, let’s see some. Fast & Furious 6 is being lauded as one of the best films in the franchise, and action movies in general. I will give the movie that. There is action throughout the movie, from car chases, to scenes completely void of cars. It doesn’t apologize for anything in the film, and goes at completely ridiculous lengths for an explosion or two.

But personally, it completely changes the genre of the film, which grinds my gears the most.

To me, everyone felt like a super hero in this film. There are TONS of hand to hand combat scenes between the two groups, and it felt like watching a live action Dragon Ball movie. Ridiculous feats of strength and long battles where neither side got hurt, when most of these people are just retired car racers. It bugged me to no end that they all basically became invincible just for the sake of a bigger action movie.

On top of that, I don’t think it flowed well. Almost every scene I felt confused due to the plot of the movie. The heroes were constantly doing nonsensical things. Nonsensical to their character and to a normal human being. They wedged a street race into the movie that plot wise didn’t make sense (nor did anything out of that London woman’s mouth before the race). At one point four or five of the bad guys get arrested and end up making their escape, yet one of the group is no longer seen in the movie. I guess they just decided to write him out of the movie.

The climatic plane ending is ruined for me thanks to it apparently being the longest run way known to man, making the ridiculousness too much to bare. It also features an Amnesia plot line, which I feel is one of the laziest plot developments you can ever come up with.

Yes, if you changed the movie to be something completely set apart from the Fast & Furious universe, I would probably enjoy the movie more. But we have five movies that are grounded (mostly) in reality, a shift in genre I can’t get over. It is breaks all the rules of the series, despite trying its hardest to include the previous five films. If it was an original movie (and better acting), I might have loved it.

2 out of 4.

Case 39 is a movie I easily walked by hundreds of times before giving it a chance. Why did I give it a chance now?

Boredom, mostly. The cover is boring. The stars aren’t my favorite. I just never cared about ever seeing it.

That is until I found out that Bradley Cooper was in it. Okay, fine, let’s do this.

Neither of these two people are Bradley Cooper.

Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is a…social worker! Ah yes, social worker, of course. She is pretty full on her schedule too. She works on child neglect things around the city. In fact, she already has 38 open cases! But her boss makes her add one more. Let’s call it Case 39. Great. Fine.

Well, she goes to the house and finds out it is very strange. Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) is starting to do bad at school and her parents are strange. She is a little bit worried about her safety, so checks in her at night a little bit later and finds her parents trying to burn her alive in an oven. Oh shit! They be crazy! They get locked up and she needs a home. Lillith wants to be adopted by Emily, but that is ridiculous.

Too bad it happens anyways. Weird things start to happen. A few weeks later, another of her cases ended up killing his parents. Whoa. Serious business. But the detectives also find out that before it happened, the kid received a phone call from Emily’s home. We all assume it was Lilith, so she gets some of that psychiatrist talk from Doug (Bradley Cooper!!) to figure out whats up. Then Doug kills himself later. Whoa.

Does Lilith have some power over people to cause them to kill themself? Is she just mentally fucked up and brings dismay to others? Or is she secretly an evil demon in a kid body brought to bring torture to everyone around? It could go either way. Straight demon horror film, or psychological thriller. Also there is a detective to help figure out whats up with Ian McShane.

Put that kid in an oven. Kids love oven.

Spoilers? It is totally a demon. They give some hints that it might not be something supernatural, just a disturbed child. Too bad, we get a demon kid movie. She also goes full demon by the end. It is very confusing at what her actual purpose is in this film. It is very irrational, and I have no idea why she even pretends to be a kid instead of just going on a demon rage.

Unfortunately, this film was pretty boring. The psychological route would have made it better overall, with a lot of people slowly going crazy, and that poor kid being in the middle of it. Misery does breed misery. That would require better writing, but it probably would still only be a 2 at that point. The beginning of the film was interesting, but as soon as the social worker decided to foster a child, that clearly interfered with the job, I lost all hope that the movie would be interesting. Sucks to suck, Case 39.

1 out of 4.

The Hangover series is a bit of an enigma. Here is why!

The original is about four men on a bachelor party in Las Vegas, where they all black out, one goes missing, and they have to retrace their steps through the wildest night of their lives before the wedding. So what’d the sequel do? The Hangover Part II gave us another wedding, another night of blacked our memories and regrets, but in Thailand. Like most sequels, in contained the same theme and a similar plot. After all, it is called The Hangover and is about being hungover, and it is not called “Some Guys Get Into Shenanigans!” I don’t know if people complained about the similarities between Die Hard and Die Hard 2.

But for whatever reason, audiences hated it and voiced their displeasure. Which is why we now have The Hangover Part III! (Trailer) Learning from their mistakes, we now have a movie about a few guys getting into shenanigans and no hangovers.

Classic elevator scenes are classic. Those sheets are suggestive as fuck.

A few years after Part II, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) is still a madman. He is off his medication and causing accidents, overly stressing his father (Jeffrey Tambor) and giving him a fatal heart attack.

Which is why his friends decide to give him an intervention. Doug (Justin Bartha), Stu (Ed Helms), and Phil (Bradley Cooper) convince him to drive down to the rehab center to get his life back on track! But along the way, they are hijacked by Marshall (John Goodman), a drug dealer and international criminal, who claims Chow (Ken Jeong) stole $21 Million in gold bars from him.

Of course the only person to be in contact with Chow since Thailand is Alan. So he kidnaps Doug, and they have three days to find Chow and his money, or Doug dies. Swell!

This film also brings back Mike Epps as “Black Doug”, Heather Graham as Jade, and introduces Melissa McCarthy as a pawn shop owner.

Yep, the whole gang is represented in this poster. Wait…

I think I am going to put this blame on the writers. In terms of plot, this Hangover actually tells a decent story. There is betrayal, redemption, and a group of guys that can’t fix their larger than life problems. But instead of focusing on the entire group, it is almost a if Stu and Phil get pushed out of the way for the Alan and Chow show.

Alan is an annoying character, which Zach G. tends to to play a lot (With mixed results). He is the type of character that is good for a comedy, but shouldn’t be the main focus. Chow was also a secondary character, but  it feels like he has more lines than even Stu, who in turn is just a punching bag for Alan this movie.

The writers intended this to be a redemption movie for Alan, and thus  gave him the leading role. After all, everyone else has settled down besides his character, so this is just his turn to settle to end the series. But it feels very forced. The film on the whole has less humor than the previous two, focusing more on the intense plot lines. In fact, the scaffolding scene from the trailer made me jump from my feet in fright. Not that the seriousness was a bad thing, but it is framed as a comedy and not an adventure/action film.

I know it is a strange thing to blame the writers yet talk highly of the plot.I wish they were able to have the same overall storyline, without cramming two (Arguably) secondary characters down our throat. It shouldn’t be hard to give Bradley Cooper or Ed Helms bigger roles in the film. They felt like replaceable cast members, which is unacceptable.

That being said, Part III wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t amazing either.

2 out of 4.

I was very excited when I first saw the trailer for Epic. The music is perfect, not a lot is spoiled, it looks beautiful, and looks like a great new franchise.

You know what I don’t like? The title. You know how hard it is to look up things about Epic? Don’t just search the title, you will get dumb internet images. “Epic Movie” is out, because of a bad movie having that exact same name. I had to resort to searching for “Epic <character/actor name” to get anything close to finding suitable images or posts. Come on people, think about the ease of finding your movie before you name it. Unfortunately, it was also made by Blue Sky Productions, who haven’t really made anything I really loved, their last effort being Ice Age 4: Continental Drift.

Just look at how sexy those birds are. Mmmmhmm.

This movie begins with death! Death before the film takes place (this is a PG movie). MK (Amanda Seyfried) is en route to her fathers house in the middle of the woods. She is almost 18, but her mother just died, and so she has to go live with her dad, who is basically a stranger to her. You see, Professor Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) believes there is a hidden ecosystem in these woods, hidden from human eyes. They react on a faster plane, like flies, so humans can’t really see them because they are always moving so…fast. Yeah, he went crazy and his wife left him. Happens all the time.

But holy tiny men, Bomba is right! In fact, it is a special day, the Summer Solstice on the same night as the Full Moon! Time for the Queen (Beyonce Knowles) to pick a new heir for the next 100 years. After all, only the queen can restore life to the forest if the evil Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) of the Boggarts (swamp/decay creatures) come to mess things up.

The leaf men won’t let that happen! Ronin (Colin Farrell) has sworn to protect her, but young Nod (Josh Hutcherson) is making things difficult by quitting. After some bad things happen, MK finds herself in the woods and magically gets shrunk down to their size. Now she is in the middle of a forest civil war, with the threat of 100 years of swamps on the horizon.

Of course, this could all be some sort of PTSD after her mom’s death for all we know. Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari play a snail and slug, respectfully, Pitbull a frog, and Steven Tyler a glowworm.

“No shell over here baby, I’m a slug” – Aziz. Possibly my new favorite line ever, and I don’t know why.

Epic is loosely based on the children’s book (that no one has heard of), The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs. Basically, it took the character ideas, and made an original story. The plot itself isn’t the most exciting or original, and was filled with certain plot holes that made me shutter.

But it’s pretty, though.

One of my biggest complaints is inconsistencies in a movie. In this case, what is the real difference between a tiny human, a plant/animal human hybrid, and an actual plant or animal.

It’d be simple if all animals and plants could talk and be human-like in this movie, but we have frogs and snails that can talk perfectly, living out their lives and jobs, right next to birds who are just 100% animal, no voice. We have flowers that are just flowers, right next to some flowers that run around, gossip, and have arms and legs. Where is the balance? How does this work?

With the leaf men, they aren’t leaves at all. They are basically tiny humans, with just leaf armor as clothing. Nothing else in the forest outside of the queen appears to be a tiny human, so I found it all confusing.

But it’s pretty, though.

Epic ended up being just an average film, not living up to its (poor) title. If you ignore how confusing the world ends up being, it is a cute tale that is outrageously incredible to look at.

“Hey, it’s a kids movie, stop thinking so deeply about the world!”. No, that is a bad excuse, and leads to movies like Cars 2.

2 out of 4