BEFORE: I used to have an account on this web-site, Hollywood Stock Exchange - I guess it started up around 1999, I played for a couple of years but at some point I got bored with it. It was a bit like the real stock exchange, except people used fake money to buy shares of Hollywood actors and upcoming movies, even ones that were in development or just rumored to be in development. I guess the game is still around, though it changed hands a few times - you can buy shares now of "Ghostbusters 5", just be aware that it might be a LONG while before that investment pays off. I remember owning shares of "Artemis Fowl" about 20 years ago, so that's how long somebody's been trying to make this movie.
The book came out in 2001, but the movie rights were sold even before the book was printed - Miramax had the rights to it first but it was in development hell for over a decade, then Disney revived the project in 2013, hired Kenneth Branagh to direct in 2015 and filming began in 2018. But then, release was pushed back from 2019 to 2020, then cancelled completely because of COVID-19, and finally released quietly on Disney Plus. Jeez, after all that, I just know it can't be any good, but still, I'm curious, thinking back to the old Hollywood Stock Exchange.
Colin Farrell carries over again from "Voyagers".
THE PLOT: Artemis Fowl, a young criminal prodigy, hunts down a secret society of faeries to find his missing father.
AFTER: Well, it worked for Harry Potter, it worked for the Chronicles of Narnia books (OK, it worked for 3 out of 7 of them, that's as far as they got) and then there's kind of the next level down on films adapted from YA sci-fi and fantasy stories, your "City of Ember" or "Percy Jackson" movies that were also adapted from novels for teens, and were moderately successful. I guess you've got to figure that at some point, that formula would stop working, right? I mean, it's not an automatic slam-dunk to take a best- or better-selling children's book and adapt it into a film, you have to then ALSO make sure it's a good movie, and this one just isn't. Though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong where, since I'm not that familiar with the source material, but it reminds me of what Patton Oswalt once said about the famous KFC bowls, which combined chicken, potatoes, gravy and corn all together, but he called it a "failure pile in a sadness bowl." Meaning that just because you put a bunch of elements together in one place, that doesn't mean that the resulting combination is going to be a good idea. (Now, me, I LIKED those KFC bowls when they were around, but I've always been one for mixing my food together in occasionally odd combinations - still, I realize it's not for everyone.)
For starters, I hate the main character here - he's smart, that's great, but does he have to be so arrogant about it? Say what you want about Harry Potter, he's very humble. He might be the chosen one, but he struggles, makes mistakes and he's not perfect. This is what we want in a hero, or somebody like Neo in "The Matrix" who's been told he's "the one", but often doesn't believe it himself. Humble, we like humble, not some snotty rich Irish kid who lords it over everybody else how smart he is.
Then there's his father, also named Artemis Fowl (which is a terrible name, really - it doesn't have the ring of a Harry Potter or a Luke Skywalker, if I'm being honest). Artemis Sr. is some kind of collectibles thief, he's taken things from all over the world and added them to his collection, I like cool thieves usually, your Ocean's Eleven-style bank robbers and such, but should a thief be a main character in a kid's movie? What kind of message does that send? Oh, wait, he's got a darn good reason for stealing everything, and that's because he wants to organize it. Wait, what? There's stuff about him believing in fairy folk and magical creatures, and supposedly everything he steals is connected to that - but what if that's just an excuse to justify taking things that aren't his?
When Artemis Sr. goes missing, Artemis Jr. knows that this is connected to the supernatural creatures somehow, but he has no idea how to navigate his father's collection and start finding the clues and solving the riddles. Wait, I thought his father took care to properly catalogue and organize the collection, so how come it doesn't make sense to somebody else? Is he a good organizer or a bad organizer, and either way, why couldn't he tell his own son where to find anything? A collection of things is just no good if you don't show it to other people or tell them what it means and where all the important things are. Oh, if only we could ask Artemis Sr. what it all means, then we could solve the kidnapping of Artemis Sr., damn the luck.
It gets much worse - the faerie folk are real, and they live inside the Earth - only in a different section from where they keep King Kong. (SIDE BURN - "Godzilla vs. Kong"...). The kidnapper is also somehow connected to the fairies, and he/she wants something called the Aculos, which Artemis Sr. stole and, yep, you guessed it, it's hidden somewhere in his collection. At the same time, a fairy commander sends out the Lower Elements Police reconnaissance force (Their acronym is LEP-recon, get it?) and they're also tasked with finding the Aculos, which can teleport anybody across the universe or become some kind of energy source or something.
First they send a fairy named Holly Short to battle a troll that got loose, and is attacking a wedding in Italy - when she's done with that, she heads off to the Fowl Manor, because that's where her deceased father brought the Aculos, and she's imprisoned by Artemis Jr. and his servant named Butler. (It's not even funny that he's a butler and his last name is Butler, because they way over-telegraph this as a joke.)
While she's there, the whole LEP-recon team attacks the mansion and time-freezes it, then they send in that troll to destroy the place. But Artemis Jr. and Butler fight back, meanwhile the world's largest dwarf (or maybe he's the shortest giant, it's tough to say...) tunnels in and finds the Aculos somehow, and he swallows it. This is just dumb on top of dumb at this point, know what I mean? Like, is there a point to anything that's taking place here? Artemis refuses to give the artifact to the mysterious masked figure who wants it, so she disintegrates Artemis Sr., or so it appears. Really, our heroes used the Aculos to teleport him out of captivity, it only LOOKED like he got disintegrated. Comic books pull this trick all the time, but they have the timing worked out - they'll make it look like Captain America got blowed up on the last page, so you have to buy the next issue to find out that he's still alive. Here, that narrative trick doesn't work so well.
I guess the heroes win? And they've rooted out names of some of the more traitorous fairies and elves, so there's that - but then the story feels really unfinished as the heroes race off to battle the villain and her associates, only WHOOPSIE the movie ran out of time so we don't get to see that battle, what a rip-off. The heroes finally get their act together and decide to take charge of the situation and it's going to be a fantastic battle and YOU DON'T GET TO SEE THAT. Yes, I realize this is like an 18-book series, but if you don't give the audience something to appreciate in the first movie, well then there's not going to BE a second movie, now is there?
There was just simply nothing happening in this movie that I cared about - like it was really difficult to keep going and soldier on, I was all hunched over because it was physically painful to keep watching all this nonsense taking place. If I didn't need to make the connection via Judy Dench to tomorrow's film, I probably would have stopped halfway through and just moved on to the next film. This is definitely one of the two worst movies that Judi Dench has been in, and the other one is "Cats". I can't even say which movie is worse, they're both that bad, but at least "Cats" has some half-decent songs in it. This one doesn't.
Also starring Ferdia Shaw, Lara McDonnell, Josh Gad (last heard in "Frozen II"), Tamara Smart, Nonso Anozie (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Judi Dench (last seen in "Iris"), Nikash Patel (last seen in "London Has Fallen"), Joshua McGuire (last seen in "Cinderella" (2015)), Chi-Lin Nim (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Lewy Xing, Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Conor MacNeill, Jean-Paul Ly, Matt Jessup (last seen in "City of Ember"), Arian Nik, Michael Abubakar, Simone Kirby (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Sally Messham (last seen in "Allied"), Emma Lau, Fabio Cicala, Molly Harris, Gerard Horan (last seen in "All Is True"), Rachel Denning, Ben Goffe, Jake Davies, Grace Molony (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), and the voice of Hong Chau (last seen in "Duck Butter").
RATING: 2 out of 10 imprisoned goblins
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