Delayed Reaction: Artemis Fowl

Premise: A child genius uncovers a world of fairies and dwarves while attempting to rescue his father.

For a studio that's known for historic success at the box office in recent years*, Disney sure has some disasters in their portfolio. John Carter made $77 million domestically on a reported $250 million budget. Tomorrowland made $93 million on a $190 million budget. The Lone Ranger: $89m for $215m. Mars Needs Moms: $21m for $150m. Then there are the movies that maybe broke even due to international sales but were still huge disappointments like The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Alice Through the Looking Glass to name a few. And even in that impressive list of box office let downs, Artemis Fowl might be the biggest write off.

*They have 14 of the 15 highest grossing movies in the US in the last decade. (9 of 15 Worldwide)

Sure, we can blame Covid-19 for Disney releasing this $125 million "franchise starter" on Disney+. I don't buy it though. I call that a lucky break. This was going to bomb even in a healthy box office. You can sort of just feel it with some movies. Mortal Engines is a good example too. These are movies with all the trappings of a major blockbuster but without a hook that interests audiences. Or even worse, they look laughable. Artemis Fowl was even delayed from August to the dreaded Memorial Day slot*. And let me be clear, Artemis Fowl wasn't going to be record-breakingly bad, like The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure earning a staggering $206 opening weekend average on 2000+ screens. It would be a blemish though on the release schedule between Black Widow and Jungle Cruise; you know, in a non-Corona timeline.

*Disney has bad luck with Memorial Day releases. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), and Tomorrowland (2015) were all recent releases on that weekend.

Unlike many of these other box office busts that I've mentioned, as a movie Artemis Fowl is quite bad. I don't know the books, but based on the movie, I'm not sure what it is about this story that has made people interested in adopting it for two decades. I don't even know where to begin.

For those who are unfamiliar, Artemis Fowl II (Ferdia Shaw) is a boy genius. No, a boy super-genius. No, more than that even. He's 12. He's rich. His dad tells him stories of a fairy world throughout his childhood. One day, when his father, Artemis Fowl I (Colin Farrell), goes missing and is accused of stealing priceless artifacts, the younger Artemis quickly realizes that the stories his father told him were all true. Then we go down to the fairy world where Judi Dench is the commander of the fairy army, Lara McDonnell is a reconnaissance officer, and Josh Gad is a dwarf who is actually human-sized for some reason. Dench and Gad sound like they are doing bad impressions of Christian Bale as Batman throughout the movie. I don't know why they are doing it but it's bad. I didn't like it and wanted it to stop. Even worse, Gad narrates the movie like that. At some point things end up at Fowl Manor with a stand-off between Artemis' crew and the Fairy army, with Artemis threatening to reveal the existence of fairies to humans.

I'll be real with you. Pretty quickly I lost interest and stopped really following what was going on. I don't know which happened first: did I lose track of the story because I lost interest or was the story too convoluted and I lost interest? I can't be sure. I only know that both happened and neither worked in the movies' favor. It's a lot of world-building in a fairly short movie, even though it somehow felt a lot longer than it was. I was disappointed with how small the movie felt. It's mostly set in and around Fowl Manor or in some heavy CG fairy world environments. The Fowl Manor set isn't impressive enough to make up for how small it made the movie feel. This movie felt like it took place in about 3 rooms. This isn't greatly surprising. Kenneth Branagh movies don't typically use space well. I've always though Thor felt oddly small. At least he used that to his advantage with Murder on the Orient Express.

The performances range from bad to depressing. Ferdia Shaw is a bust. Maybe he'll grow into a better performer or do better with better material, but he is wooden and lacks an ounce of charisma in this. I can't think of a young performer I've wanted to follow around less. I just felt bad for Judi Dench whenever she was on screen. At least when she looked silly in Cats, I could believe she was having fun. She looks miserable in this. I hope it was a rewarding shoot in other ways. Josh Gad plays a character named Mulch Diggums. I think that says enough. He plays every scene like he's doing it on a dare or thinks he's on a prank show. Colin Farrell isn't in it much. There was no one that stood out. I could see room for Nonso Anozie as Artemis' body guard/family servant/manny(?) to be a lot of fun, but it never materialized. Lara McDonnell is in too much of the movie for me to be blanking entirely about her.

I'm not stupid. I know this movie is more kid-facing than family-facing. Ultimately, I'm the wrong audience to be judging the merits of this. It would be like me saying Paw Patrol is bad. To that, I have two things to say. First, the movie never should've cost this much if it was really going to target such a narrow audience. As long as we're going to only talk about Disney as a world-eating behemoth, it's a bad investment to put this much money into something if there wasn't a hint of four-quadrant potential. Second, I don't know how it cost so much anyway. The Kid Who Would Be King cost half as much and felt twice as big.

I don't like bashing movies. I like movies. I respect the amount of work that goes into even the bad ones. I'm not having fun bashing this movie, but long ago I committed to writing about every new movie I see, so here we are.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend