PLOT: As sheriffs prepare to foreclose on his grandma's land, a little boy seeks the secret treasure of the Minimoys -- a tiny blue-eyed, red-haired people who live under the farm after being brought from Africa by his adventurer grandpa.
The most commercial-minded filmmaker France ever produced, action-guy Luc Besson must have seen so many marketing opportunities when he undertook a CGI kid-flick, his head fairly exploded.
Bien sur, we could do this in 31 languages, altering the mouths so the words match the lips in every country! That could explain the fact that the voice acting in Arthur And The Invisibles sounds so phoned-in (and often, yes, fails to match the characters' lip movements).
That's only one of the problems with this live-action/FX hybrid, taken from Besson's own children's book Arthur And The Minimoys. Arthur And The Invisibles is a commercial project rather than a story, a fairy-tale without heart, a cheap facsimile of influences from Roald Dahl to Tolkien to Shrek -- with an overdose of awkward and incongruous pop culture.
Always utterly familiar, even as it switches gears and speeds from one act to another, Arthur And The Invisibles starts out wonkily enough. As in his previous film, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Freddie Highmore appears as the title character, a good-hearted poor boy in a place (Massachusetts) where some people have English accents for no apparent reason.
While his parents look for work, Arthur lives alone with his grandma (Mia Farrow, who has had a little more work done than your average granny).
That is, until the evil developer forecloses on the land, giving Arthur a 48-hour deadline to find the jewels of the Minimoy -- a tiny race of blue-eyed, red-haired people his granddad brought from Africa (huh?) along with a tribe of tall black Africans, all of whom live invisibly in the field.
To this point, the movie is almost likeable in its petty thievery of Dahl's gentle oeuvre. But it goes south fast when the tall warriors use their juju to make Arthur small and send him to the land of the Minimoy.
All of a sudden we're in the land of ultra-hip tiny elves and trolls (some of them actually do look like those troll dolls from the '60s), who seem to have spent too much time watching cable TV. There's a gangsta Minimoy, voiced by Snoop Dogg, who runs kind of a "coffee shop" out of his "crib." The Princess Selenia -- whom Arthur has adored from sketches in his grandfather's notebook -- is a petulant, sarcastic mallgirl with a sword. She's voiced by Madonna, who has petulant down at least, if not other emotions.
In fact, though we've become used to big-name actors giving less than Oscar-winning performances in animated films, seldom have big names seemed so anonymous. Without advance warning, you probably would never notice that Robert De Niro or Harvey Keitel were voice talent (the King and a character named Miro).
None of this matters to your 8-year-old, of course (nor would it seem icky to him that a character voiced by a 48-year-old Madonna is in puppy love with a 14-year-old boy. That's just there to make grownups squirm).
They'll be more interested in the CGI (which is eh, though there is one good battle scene with Arthur riding a mosquito) and the plot, which involves thwarting the scheme of the evil Maltazard (David Bowie, who does give good villain) to drown our little friends.
For all that, the movie is too long by half for its relatively simple plot. And letting kids get antsy, as any parent can tell you, is the biggest sin a filmmaker can commit.
BOTTOM LINE: French director Luc Besson tries something new -- a CGI kid-flick -- and is completely at sea. FX are clumsy and the story itself is a pastiche of stolen mythologies when it's not straining to be hip (Snoop Dogg as a gangsta elf?). Voicing a teen warrior princess, Madonna is as bad an actress as ever. David Bowie gives good villain though.
(This film is rated G)
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