When I went to see this film, I was not aware of the number of famous voices in the film (I purposely did not want to research this beforehand in case it hindered my appreciation of the film) and didn’t recognise all but two of them. I went to see the film purely for the plot as it sounded like a great movie, and was pleasantly impressed.
“Epic” tells the story of M.K. who moves back home to live with her father. She longs to be close to him, however he is too distracted by his strong desire to find the apparent tiny civilisation of people that live in the nearby forest. Overcome with grief and frustration, M.K. chooses to leave but instead finds herself shrunken down and unexpectedly becomes part of a quest to save worlds.
I really loved the story. It had a lot of detail and a lot going on, but never too much nor too hard to follow. The graphics were absolutely stunning and I adored the amount of colour used in this film. The designs of the characters were quite genius and impressive, and I think it’s fair to say I will never look at my garden the same way again. In a way, you could say that this is a cleverly hinted educational film, teaching children to care for the environment and appreciate the world around them as well.
The voices I recognised in this film were Christoph Waltz and Beyoncé Knowles. The other voices in this film consisted of; Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Colin Farrell, Steven Tyler, Jason Sudeikis, Pitbull, Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd. I know what you’re thinking, “Why all the big names?” I’m not sure either. I think it’s safe to say that children don’t really care which famous names are behind the voices. Whilst I can on one hand complain about the lack of real voice actors being given a chance to work in their own industry, at the same time I can’t really complain, considering what a good job everyone did in their roles.
The standouts in this film would definitely be Christoph Waltz, Amanda Seyfried and Steven Tyler. I am very aware of their other works, yet they still created personality and a real individual voice for all of their characters which is actually quite admirable and impressive.
Epic has something in it for everyone. It’s smart, it’s sweet, it’s funny, has a great unpredictable plot and has an essence of storytelling from old fairytale animations that we haven’t seen for a long time. I highly recommend a viewing of this excellent film. Not only will I never look at plants and flowers the same way again, but I will do my best to not step on snails when walking home from the rain. I really loved this film.