They drained the wondrous world of Artemis Fowl of all its charm, wit, and heart. It fell flat on its face, and it never got back up.
More like Artemis Foul amirite?
Probably should have just made it a Disney Plus series. Movies try to fit too many books into one film.
Though, you’re better off just listening to the Richard Roeper review. This movie really isn’t deserving of only 14% good reviews.
It is nice to get a Summer movie at home. Artemis Fowl isn’t as magical as a Harry Potter movie. It is a nice present to enjoy at home. When you can’t go to theaters though.
I can’t say Artemis Fowl is bad or as bad as a movie that has gotten 14% good reviews. There’s more story than a Bayforners film.
If you think about it, what classic Fantasy from the 80’s did critics actually like ? So why listen to people who hated the Labyrinth, Return to Oz, Willow, The Neverending Story....
Artemis isn’t as memorable as any movie I just mentioned. However it has some charm and better than a weaker Disney Fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time.
Performances wise. Josh Gad and
Lara McDonnell are the only ones who stand out. Well, not just because Gad borrowed Hagrid’s look. Lara McDonnell makes a charming fairy.
Ferdia Shaw is the least interesting and he is Artemis. Since I wasn’t sure if he was actually trying or not. He also doesn’t really get much to do.
I can't believe I waited nearly 20 f*cking years for this to be the end result.
Disney absolutely BUTCHERED the books to the point where the characters aren't recognizable AT ALL.
The story makes absolutely NO SENSE whatsoever. Even if you didn't read the books and you know nothing about Artemis and his world, the movie has no discernible plot, no character growth, terrible acting all around, horrible script... I could go on but honestly I'd rather just reread the books and forget I ever watched this.
A disgrace is what this movie is.
Really bad movie with a super rushed narrative. I haven’t read the books so i can’t say anything about it’s fidelity. Half the time it fails by not giving you the information needed, so you don’t understand why things are the way there are. The other half is someone explaining what’s happening so fast he/she doesn’t have time to breathe, let alone allow the words to sink in, therefore it doesn’t create emotion. To me is a 3/10 and only because of the good special effects and originality of the story’s idea.
And to be clear, came to see without watching any trailers or synopsis, and without seen any reviews or critics. Sad, I’ve never seen Disney fail like this.
so now i know the reason why this one skipped the theaters
Worst movie I've ever seen. Barely any relation to the books. None of the characters are interesting, they've all been completely modified from how they are in the book for no reason and their motivations are pretty much non-existent. It's all rushed and makes no sense whatsoever.
Holly and Mulch were the only redeemable actors. The plot was irreparably convoluted by the fact that they crammed several books into the same movie. This would have done far better with a different cast, different script, more research into the books, and a format change from movie to TV series. As a kid I read these books from cover to cover, absorbing myself in to the world of Artemis Fowl and the Lower Elements. This movie is just a disservice to such an already rich world.
Sadly, not very good. A rushed narrative, a Disneyfied move away from the source novels, and some uninspired directing means this film isn't the next great YA movie you may have been hoping for. This tale of the mastermind criminal is more criminal than mastermind.
The entire film felt like a sprint (to nowhere). Josh Gad was the only redeeming aspect. And if you expected the film or characters to be ANYTHING like the books, forget it. Disney, why? Just why?
Welp this movie was complete dog shit! AVOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Good:
* Some of the visuals are really nice
The Bad:
* Pretty much everything else.
* Film fails to get you invested in any of the characters
* The meaningless "plot"
* The acting is pretty terrible / not believable.
The Best Part:
The visual transition from the "real" world into the fairy world
It's clearly a movie for kids so I guess it could be ok for that, plenty of other (better) movies for that though.
Although some of the visuals are pretty they are not frequent enough to warrant spending an hour and a half. I'd skip it.
The movie lasts 1 hour 35 mins approximately and it felt like 4 hours of garbage. What an awful film!
This was utter rubbish. Pure crap. Honestly I have got no words to describe the utter disappointment I am feeling from this movie. Anyway that’s it from me.
This was magical. I was full ready to see it, watched the first 20 minutes in full attention and then magically fell asleep. I tried so hard to stay awake, couldn't save my life. Kept seeing minutes of it and dozing off the moment the action started. Again waked up when it got quite and there was dialog. It was quite magical and annoying this strange occurrence.
Well. What can I say. Boring?
Looks like an overly ambitious project that fell way-way-way short (pun intended).
It's a kids movie, where I'm not really sure about what the intended age range would be or should be. Graphically stunning. Story adaption for the movie, terrible.
I really liked the movie, and I hope that there's going to be more to this than this one.
It has some Harry Potter movie vibes, and I'm loving that. I'm indeed recommending it.
Not what I had hoped for. Loved the books and this doesn't do them justice. It's a decent film, don't get me wrong, but nothing near what it could have been.
There is nothing more demonstrative of this film's failure than the fact that Kenneth Branagh transformed the swashbuckling adventures of Artemis Fowl into a weird chamber piece. It's almost as if they tried to make a heist film, but the stolen object is in the protagonist's house unbeknownst to him — thus eliminating the most exciting part, the theft.
It's true, Fowl never leaves his house once the film is properly underway and only leaves it again once the film is concluding. Thus, the occasional flashes of visual interest in the underground city of magical creatures are few and far between — as Holly Short's time there is brief in comparison to the length of time we spend in Fowl manor.
Even more fundamental to the film's quality is the straining of narrative coherence. Occasionally, characters will reference plot points that they weren't aware of before and didn't learn at any point on screen.
There are a few moments of fun to be had here, but the film is a mess. Poorly edited, poorly shot, Artemis Fowl should have stayed in development hell.
Where do I start? First of all, I really hate 90-minute movies, they almost never have enough time to properly set up character development and any kind of background information that would be nice to know. It felt like an unfinished movie - like the second half of the movie was just missing. I wish all movies had a beginning, middle and an end. The "End" part is sadly what seems to be missing in a lot of movies these days.
I did still enjoy the movie - in the time of COVID, it's always nice to get something new to watch especially something that could have been a summer blockbuster. I did find it to be an enchanting movie, especially the two leads Shaw and McDonnell. But it was lacking in substance.
In this case, I agree with Jim222001 - this would have made a much better Disney+ series.
100% this one is just for the kids, the short runtime is a blessing. Once you use a direct narrative vehicle to explain the detail, you're left with an elevator pitch length storyline. Could have easily been a 40min episode of a series instead.
Kid's fantasy crossed with secret agent. Cute, feel good movie. Adults can enjoy it, so not really sure why the lower ratings. Maybe they were expecting it to be risque with Colin Farrell in it. Still Disney and the main character is a 12 year old. So an 8.
It seems like they did a lot to set up the franchise for future films, but failed to include key parts from the books.
The film failed to show the "criminal" and "mastermind" parts of Artemis Fowl. He's supposed to be broken from his mentally ill mother, but she had already died long before the start of the film. His father is in the picture in the film and tells him pretty much everything. Aside from primary school and antiquity knowledge, you can't really see how smart he is because every piece of knowledge is handed to him by his father. In the books, he does everything on his own because he's a genius.
It also failed to show his obsession with becoming more rich. In the books, he demanded gold in exchange for Holly, but instead he wanted them to work together to save his father? The criminal and mastermind thing about the boy is how he finds the existence of this other world and manipulates them into giving him gold.
They introduced some fairy rules, but didn't go into any detail...
They completely didn't explain surviving the time stop. That moment in the book was the climax. All life was to be wiped out, but Artemis & friends survives -- how?? The film didn't even mention this.
Juliet is Butler's niece... making that bond weaker than a brother-sister bond. Who really cares about their niece that much? It was more like "oh crap I gotta protect her or my sibling is gonna kill me."
They also revealed Butler's first name immediately... the reveal of his first name was a sacred and an important moment in the books.
Holly and Artemis' relationship... I think they sort of did okay with this. They showed some humanity in Holly throughout the film so that it wasn't unbelievable that she'd trust Artemis. Even though in book 1, their relationship is really captor-victim and Artemis is pretty cruel to her.
Some practical effects were really cool, but some of the CGI was weird. The goblins were well done.
Mulch was probably the best part.
They spent like 20 minutes on the troll scene when they could have added some more scenes to flesh out everything.
Maybe it's fun for the little kids, but the reason why the Artemis Fowl series is so good is because Artemis is a manipulative, genius arsehole that will do anything to get what he wants. He'll play you like a fool and make you do his bidding regardless if you come from a completely different world with insanely advanced technology. This film makes Artemis Fowl just another kid who is kinda smart and was born into the right family to eventually become the "chosen one."
I know I shouldn't be comparing it to the books, but I think they really failed at even establishing the character of Artemis Fowl. They changed parts of the character that just made him... not Artemis Fowl.
It's sad that this film was 20 years in the making and this is what was created. Hopefully someone comes along in 10 years to make a better one.
Rubbish.
There's really not anything good about 'Artemis Fowl', except for the decent score perhaps. The premise is terrible and poorly told, not helped by the fact it takes itself pretty seriously for much of the 95 minute run time. The pacing is off, while the effects are meh. I haven't read the source material, so can't comment on that.
The cast don't work any wonders. Nothing personal against Ferdia Shaw but he isn't good in the lead role, I thought his age-mate Lara McDonnell did alright as Holly though. I like Josh Gad but his role here is bad, his narration is particularly ropey. Judi Dench's Julius is irritating too, while Colin Farrell and Nonso Anozie are underused.
A big misfire, unfortunately. Not the worst film I've ever seen though. They openly set up a sequel at the end, which I'd imagine won't be happening given the reaction to this - a situation like 2007's 'The Golden Compass' potentially.
THE WACPINE OF ‘ARTEMIS FOWL’
WRITING: 2
ATMOSPHERE: 2
CHARACTERS: 3
PRODUCTION: 8
INTRIGUE: 2
NOVELTY: 2
ENJOYMENT: 2
The Good:
The CGI and visual style captures Eoin Colfer’s vision well; this film looks and feels like a typical Disney family fantasy.
Judi Dench is great as always and is surprisingly spot-on as Commander Root despite the gender-swap. Her performance is unlike anything else she has done and she is one of the better aspects of this feature.
Josh Gadd is somewhat good as Mulch and seems like a good fit for the role. He looks like a smaller Hagrid though, which is probably intentional.
The fairy parts are the more faithful and well-made parts in the entire film, even though they strongly simplify from the culture depicted in the novels.
The Bad:
Not a good call to have Mulch Diggums narrate the film, because that voice is tiresome to listen to.
From his very first scene until the end, Ferdia Shaw in his feature-film debut t is terrible as Artemis. He is wooden and fails to capture the rather deep characteristics of the brilliant-minded, calculating and cold Artemis in the novels - he acts older than his 11 years, but this version is a whiney, useless brat and nothing more. It's sad to see Artemis reduced to this because he such a unique child genius in the books.
In the novels, Butler is Artemis' most trustworthy friend and right hand, but here he is nothing more than a father surrogate and not the cool and fearless servant. And why do they keep calling him Dom?
Opal Koboi is horrible. The film version is a shadow of what the second book gives us. She is pointless, clichéd and underused. We never see or interact with her properly. I don't even know why she's in here, since 95% of the adapted material is from book one.
The plot is a mess. For some unexplained reason, it tries to cram two novels into one film but doesn't utilize any of the sources satisfying. It takes almost 30 minutes for the film to feature its first scene adapted from actual material from the first book. The script dial to fully bring Colfer's world and characters to life and changes so much that it's wrong to call this an adaptation. 95% of the film is original content, and none of it is justified or makes the film any better.
The film moves through the first novel so swiftly it barely has time to touch upon the more intricate parts of the plot or to bring the details of Colfer's world alive. It's a very shallow film, not at all representative of the original novel. They have to cram in so much that there's no time to set up things properly and the resulting scrip lacks any of the heart and soul of the original work.
I appreciate the attempt to diversify the cast somewhat, but Nikesh Patel’s Foaly is very different from the funny and absent-minded novel counterpart. It’s not a very successful adaptation of one of the better characters in the books.
I cannot forgive the fact that they decided to have Artemis and Butler actively engage in battle with the elves in a series of horribly choreographed, shot and edited sequences. It's a far cry from the brilliantly plotted and slow trench war in the book. They've changed the entire encounter and none of the greatness of the book is present here.
You wouldn't believe this film is directed by Kenneth Branagh and produced by Robert De Niro. Both are capable of so much better.
The Ugly:
What the heck is the Aculos they Keep going on about? And why is Holly going on about her father all the time? AND HOW DARE THEY SET UP A SEQUEL?
WACPINE RATING: 3.00 / 10 = 1,5 stars
An absolute disgrace not only on the books but as a movie in general. After Cats I wasn't surprised by Judi Dench, but I was sad to see Colin Farrell be a part of this.
I really enjoyed this film. I'm not sure why it's getting so much hate. Looking forward to a sequel if it happens.
not bad just good if you don't compared this to the books this is really good. Comparing this to those book alot of things changed like the story, and the characters. Idk but for me this movie is good because it has good acting and awesome CGI / Special Effects.
How does Cats even have better reviews ? lol. Critics are enjoying hating on this too much.
This is such a bad movie!
6,510
The Dwarf was kinda annoying
The whole movie felt like a Disney Channel movie. Stay away, not worth your time.
Movie was so bad. Over an hour of my life Im not getting back.
The worst movie I have ever had the misfortune to watch.
OMG, I readed all except 1 book, and they managed to spoil me that book. WHAT A SHAME of Movie. GO AWAY FROM THIS ONE. 1/10 and because I cannot put a -100/10.
Almost a Netflix movie. The kid is stupid, dont really know if thats acting ir just fail.
That story can give a 10/10 movie, but i think the director didnt read the same book.
Disney have definitely lost their touch. This is one of their worst movies I’ve watched in the last 10 years. Idea wise it was good but the execution and pacing was awful.
Once I thought Eragon was the worst book-to-movie adaptation. D'arvit. Now I miss this innocent thought.
I mean, Eragon, as a movie in itself, it's quite enjoyable if you haven't read the books.
But this "thing" here is so shallow, the writing is so empty, it can't even be considered an ok movie. Not even a "meh". It's beyond bad. It's simply not enjoyable, not even by someone who likes the theme and have never read the books, like my girlfriend.
I actually feel sorry for the young actors, as the more experienced ones managed to get through the bad writing and directing, but unfortunately not enough to make it a good movie.
What the writers/directors of this atrocity did should be considered crime, and the sentence is to never write a script or direct a movie again.
What a utter garbage. Maybe Disney should fund someone's indie film with that money rather than producing this bull. Opera music in slow motion, really?
Yikes. Almost nothing made sense in this movie, the boy is the mother of all Mary Sues, and Josh Gad narrating with that fake deep voice was cringe-inducing.
Based on the comments I didn't expect a masterpiece, but maybe something passably fun like Spiderwick Chronicles? Nope, just a pile of garbage.
This was one of the most AWESOME movies I have ever seen. There will be a sequel. I hope for many more!!!
Not bad, the movie doesn't make much sense at all, I was expecting Artemis to go to the fairyland, but no, I don't want to say where it happened because I'd give a spoiler. Anyway, the ending is a bit bad for him, and there I was expecting something else, that Artemis had gone to the villain to save his father, but it didn't happen (it's not a spoiler).
From what is understood at the end, a second part of the film would appear. More than grade 6, this movie might not be worth it if it was longer, but the story and the action might have been at least grade 7 if it had been better.
This just looks so lame. I feel sorry for those who watched it. You have my sympathy
just there. with nice effects
Didnt know anything about the story coming in. Ive heard it’s a book well i hope the book is better because this is so bad i couldn’t watch it all, and that’s a lot coming from me that watch pretty much everything to a point of it becoming an unhealthy obsession lol.
Did anyone else got a bit of a Golden Compass feeling here? I liked it but I got a feeling it could be so much more.... The feeling they packed to much story in just one and a half hours kinda leaves me with a bad taste. Guess we have to wait to see if they will make this a tv show so. Can't wait for that tbh...
I enjoyed this movie. Good entertainment, just the right length and an obvious sequel to come. Well worth a watch. :thumbsup_tone1:
It will be ok for kids but it's not good overall.
I'm shocked at the low ratings in just a matter of days... Hmmmmm.. Guess I'll wait this one out.
What I can say 3 Stars just to make them happy. This is a Bad Movie...... Bad Play by the Kid and some others....
"I take responsibility" - Kenneth Branagh suicide note.
Shout by jacoiasBlockedParentSpoilers2020-06-14T22:39:28Z
I hope Kenneth Branagh was drunk when he made this film because i don't recognize him. This film is very lacking of heart, passion and dedication, and meaning most of all. I don't know, things happen for no reason, there are a lot of characters half-explaining things i'm not able to understand completely and the rescue of the father is completely cut out. Then there could be a lot of other things to say more about this film, but i don't even know what have i just watched. Maybe Artemis Fail. 1.5/10