Artemis -- Foul

It's been well over a decade since I read Artemis Fowl. The particulars of the book have long since faded from my mind, but I remember a few things. It was decent enough that I read a few of the books that followed in the series. I later ended up quitting the series because it slid rapidly downhill for me. (I suppose it was aimed at the especially young side of the "young adult" audience.) Also: "This is going to be a movie some day."

That day is now. And that movie is terrible.

Artemis Fowl is a young boy of towering intellect. When his father is abducted by a villainous fairy creature, he hatches an elaborate scheme to acquire the magical artifact needed for the ransom. A vicious standoff at his lavish family manor ensues.

It's something of a head-scratcher, but this movie is directed by Kenneth Branagh. To be clear, it's been many years since Branagh was precious about directing only the most highbrow entertainment. He's made plenty of blockbusters -- some quite enjoyable, others not so much (though even Thor looked pretty great, and was obviously effective enough not to derail the Marvel roller coaster in its early days). But this movie is so lacking in any hint of why Branagh would want to make it, one can only conclude a vault load of money was involved.

I would also conclude that Branagh did not get final cut. Artemis Fowl clocks in at a scant 95 minutes, and it feels as though an hour or more has been excised. I don't say that from any memory of the books -- the plot was only coming back to me in dim snippets as the movie unspooled. I say that based on the perplexing dump trucks of exposition crammed into tiny capsules (even as huge swaths of the movie go without any explanation whatsoever). I say it based on the enormous percentage of the dialogue that's spoken off camera in voice-over: as we watch computer screens, while we stare at the backs of people's heads, or as other characters listen oh-so-intently. It looks like fully half of what's said was recorded in a marathon ADR session months after the filming wrapped.

It also seems to be edited by someone deathly afraid of there being any moment of stillness in the movie -- or perhaps someone who hopes that if it all whizzes by at a breakneck pace, the audience won't notice how little of it makes sense. Characters drop in and out of the narrative without explanation. Motivations change in an instant without reason. The action is incoherent in its machine-gun intensity.

And the performances are uniformly bad. Actors clearly like working with Kenneth Branagh, and I suppose one doesn't have to wonder why. Here, Branagh has dipped into his Murder on the Orient Express contact list to cast Judi Dench as fairy Commander Root and Josh Gad as "giant dwarf" thief Mulch Diggums. Dench just has to look intense and boss people around, like her M character from James Bond, but without the charm or wit. Gad is saddled with a terrible voice-over to try to glue the chopped up movie back together. Both of them adopt a ridiculous gravelly voice, as though they're auditioning to replace Christian Bale as Batman -- a weird affectation also shared by the movie's faceless cliche-spewing villain. Colin Farrell's here too, but instantly forgettable. Needless to say, the child actors are all simply lost at sea in this mess; if Judi Dench can't be good here, what hope has an actor who's been alive less than a quarter of the time she's been performing?

It looks kind of cool in a few moments? I guess? There are perhaps two or three lines that'll make you laugh in spite of yourself -- but perhaps that's only because the bar has been lowered so much by then. Yet basically... they had to put this movie up on Disney+, because the thought of seeing in a theater (pandemic or no) seems ridiculous.

I'd say this was clearly the worst movie I've seen this year, but the truth is it was really running neck-and-neck with Aquaman for me. (Still, it seems some people liked Aquaman; I can't imagine who would enjoy Artemis Fowl.) It's a D- that probably only escapes being an F by taking only an hour and a half of my time.