Somehow, Kenneth Branagh has gone from directing award winning adaptations like “Henry V (1989)”, “Much Ado About Nothing (1993),” and “Cinderella (2015)” to the most mediocre of adaptations in the forms of “Thor” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” Now, he seems to have completed this arc by delivering the world the shiny, glistening turd that is “Artemis Fowl,” one of the absolute worst films of the year.
At the very least, the film feels authentic. Thanks to the casting of actual Irish actors like Colin Farrell, Lara McDonnell, and Ferida Shaw, there isn’t a bad accent in earshot. Umm…McDonnell is pretty decent as Elven police officer Holly Short. That’s pretty much the best that can be said for the film though: one decent performance and not terrible accents.
It bares mentioning that for every review, one might go to a source like Wikipedia or iMDB for actors names, writers, directors, etc. The Wikipedia page seems to communicate information about the characters better than the film itself: Mulch Diggums, played by a gravel gargling Josh Gad, is apparently a former associate of Artemis Fowl Sr., though at no point is that communicated in the film. The same goes for characters like Artemis Jr.’s “best friend” Juliet. At some points they interact, but the film introduces her like a random character who happens to be there, not like the best friend of the main character.
These issues are emblematic of the entire film’s flaws. It crumbles underneath its own ambitions, introducing fantastical concepts and then never doing anything with them: the police force combing the Faerie world for a missing artifact? Never seen. There’s a force field that seems to be hiding the invading Elves from the human world when they invade Artemis’s house despite the house being surrounded by miles of forest where no one else lives. There’s too much world-building and logic that goes into the film, overexplaining every action at every move.
It’s also painfully child friendly. A “death” happens with a character literally sitting straight up in a chair with no indication of any wounds whatsoever, and then they are magically healed 5 minutes later.
The script is absolutely abysmal. Of the two writers credited, one is Conor McPherson, an Irish playwright who holds a doctorate in Literature and the other is Hamish McColl, the writer of “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” and “Johnny English Reborn.” Some truly idiotic lines spout from these characters mouths, but none take the cake like Elven leader Judi Dench landing on the beach outside of Artemis’s house and saying out loud, to no one, “Top of the mornin’.”
It genuinely feels as though the film was made up as they went along, not just shooting anything and everything they could think of, but even continuing to make it all up in the editing process. There are cuts everywhere that make no sense, and lines clearly dubbed over and added in post to make the changes decided upon after the editing process make as much sense as possible.
A terrible script, awful editing, and a sense that things are just tumbling along by sheer willpower alone might not be enough to turn people away though, so let’s not forget this crucial point: it is virtually impossible to care about Artemis or anyone else in this film.
Artemis is a genius child-prodigy of the most boring variety. Early on in the film we’re told that Artemis is a child-prodigy and are given a list of every achievement he’s completed up until his age of 12. Not once do we see any of this, even in a flashback. Every important moment in the film is told to the audience instead of shown in any form. An important macguffin artifact is stolen? Tell them, don’t show any exciting robbery scene. A character’s father is long dead? Don’t show the death or even hint at it, have them directly tell one another.
Even if the script was better or the film decided to show these events, it still doesn’t help the fact that Artemis and the world around him is just boring. They don’t leave his fortress of a house, and 85% of the film takes place in a standoff outside it. It feels shockingly low-budget for a film reported to cost $125 million, not counting the marketing.
The film even manages to botch the narration of the film. Josh Gad’s character is supposed to be recounting the events of the film to British Intelligence, but there are numerous moments that make no sense if he was to be narrating it to them. At one point he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Haven City.” Yet, if he was actually explaining this to BI, why would he say it in such a way? He also tells them that “He’s the smartest boy I’ve ever known” despite only knowing him for around 45 minutes. Its yet another example of something likely left on the cutting room floor or added in at the eleventh hour.
There’s a reason that “Artemis Fowl” is the only of Disney’s delayed 2020 theatrical films to be given a digital release. The film is abysmal in just about every single quality, not sparing a single actor. At its best, its boring. At its worst, it’s a bizarre amalgamation of editing mishaps, overwritten world-building and explanations that overexplain every single moment of the film. Artemis says he’s the next criminal mastermind. No, the only criminals are the executives at Disney. If this had been put out for theater ticket prices, it would’ve been highway robbery. 1/5
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