'Artemis Fowl' Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes: 13% (39 reviews) with 4.01 average ratingMetacritic: 32/100 (24 critics)The scores will change as time passes. Meanwhile, I’ll post some short reviews.This long-in-development adaptation, directed with misplaced bravado by Kenneth Branagh, has enough plot for four or five movies, none of which you will want to see. The idea of bringing a popular YA franchise — more than 25 million copies sold worldwide — to the screen is to expand the fan base, not shrink it.-David Rooney, The Hollywood ReporterIn a film built on a bestselling eight-book series, filled with all manner of magical beings (including Colin Farrell), and rich in fairy tale history, the best scene is one in which its grating narrator farts on a passerby. You didn’t see that in the “Harry Potter” films, and for good reason.-Kate Erbland, IndieWire: D+Images and characters bounce around like shapes on a screensaver and only McDonnell and Gad’s performances have any fizz. This is a YA-franchise by numbers.-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 2/4What a waste. Screenwriters Conor McPherson and Hamish McColl have taken a not-very-good book and turned it into a downright awful movie. How could Branagh — whose projects remain so firmly grounded in character, no matter their scale — have lost sight of the fact that a movie named “Artemis Fowl” should have focused on making the character someone audiences wanted to be around? Then the idea of spending more time with him in future adventures might actually appeal. Instead, we get a movie with a loosely defined hero, an even vaguer villain and a whole lot of things flying at the screen, in service of one of those endings that suggests we’ve just watched the origin story for a character we’ll never hear from again.-Peter Debruge, VarietyAn overqualified adult cast and some fun moments can’t entirely compensate for a defanged protagonist and too-static plot. This fantasy desperately needed a little more magic.-Helen O'Hara, Empire: 2/5I can’t imagine this movie pleasing anyone. It’s drastically different than the book it’s based upon, and watching Gad or co-star Judi Dench, who plays a commander of the fairy forces, growl all their lines isn’t amusing enough to stick with this misfire. Kids deserve good, PG-rated adventure movies, but Artemis Fowl struggles to cohere let alone tell an interesting tale. Sure, you can watch it on Disney+, but you could also find countless other ways to better spend 95 minutes of your time.-Matt Goldberg, Collider: FWhen I was an intern at Tribeca Productions almost 20 years ago, there was a screenplay for an Artemis Fowl movie in the company’s script library. I don’t remember any of its specifics, but I do remember thinking it wasn’t very good — and sure enough, that version of the movie got stuck in development hell for many years, until Disney picked up the property and began work on the film we finally got. I can’t say for certain that any of the previous iterations of the material, including one that would have been directed by Jim Sheridan, would have been any better than this one. All I know for sure is it was not worth the wait.-Matt Singer, Screen Crush: 2/10And though it would have been lovely to take in the lavish set pieces and the cool CGI creations and the whiz-bang action sequences on the big screen, “Artemis Fowl” still plays well as a warm and funny and entertaining at-home family viewing experience.-Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times: 3/4Rather than being a massive foul-up, “Artemis Fowl” is a sufficient spycraft fantasy that could benefit from the inevitable sequel, and Gad proves once again to be the Mouse House’s Dwayne Johnson, a rock-solid personality who makes everything around him better.-Brian Truitt, USA Today“Artemis Fowl” is trying to be something very different – bigger, beefier, flashier and not as magical. You can’t really blame it for aiming lower, but there’s enough tantalizing promise here to wish that it didn’t.-Steve Pond, The WrapArtemis Fowl concocts an adventure that requires its privileged hero to go virtually nowhere, physically or emotionally. As if he ordered it on Instacart, conflict is simply dropped off on his front stoop, and all he has to do is throw on some shoes and sunglasses to pick it up.-Pat Brown, Slant: 1.5/4I tried desperately to keep my expectations for an Artemis Fowl movie low. Just because a movie isn’t a shot-for-shot adaptation of its source material doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad, I kept telling myself, as my hopes sank lower and lower through the film. But Artemis Fowl is not just a disappointing adaptation, it’s a badly made movie. Its Frankensteined plot and its shockingly poor CGI — which could have passed in an early 2000s movie, but not in 2020 — leave it no redeeming qualities. It gives me no joy to say that yet another movie adaptation of a beloved childhood property has wasted Colin Farrell.-Hoai-Tran Bui, /FILM: 1/10It’s not clear who the film is even for. Anyone who grew up reading Colfer’s novels over a decade ago will have moved on. And unlike later Potter films, there’s none of the darkness or depth to appeal beyond the youngest viewers. Barely serviceable as a lockdown time-filler, this is a major (Arte)misfire. Without the darkness or depth of the Harry Potter movies, Artemis Fowl fails to find an audience over 10 years old-Jordan Farley, Total Film: 2/5DIRECTORKenneth BranaghWRITERConor McPherson & Hamish McCollMUSICPatrick DoyleCINEMATOGRAPHYHaris ZambarloukosEDITORMatthew TuckerRelease date:June 12, 2020 on Disney+Budget:$125 millionSTARRINGFerdia Shaw as Artemis Fowl IILara McDonnell as Holly ShortJosh Gad as Mulch DiggumsTamara Smart as Juliet ButlerNonso Anozie as Domovoi ButlerColin Farrell as Artemis Fowl IJudi Dench as Commander Julius Root via /r/movies https://ift.tt/30wLqqB