Headed out to the ever-fabulous Rave Theater this weekend to catch a flick and to pay a wonderful $8.75 for the opportunity to yet again prove that my wife generally does a much better job choosing films than I do.Sheesh did this one stink.
I post this today in an effort to prevent anyone else from spending even one dollar on the dreck of a film, Arthur and the Invisibles. The film is - as most critics have agreed - absolutely awful.
The set up - along with most of the rest of the movie - is one that you've seen before: poor kid lives with grandma because parents are poor. Grandma's house is about to be taken away unless kid can find treasure buried in the back yard by long, lost grandpa. Luckily, the kid's British - in spite of the fact that nobody else in the film is, but that's explained away in a heartbeat as he mentions that he's been at the boarding school in London - in spite of the fact that his very clearly American parents and grandparents can't afford to keep him or their home (painful part of the film #1).
Plus, we're given a two-dimensional, vaguely southern, white-suit-wearing dopey bad guy who's about to forclose on the farm (overused cliche, painful part #2).
So the kid - with the help of a tribe of tall, badly-dubbed tribesmen who nobody notices live in the backyard (painful part #3) - heads into the mythical, largely animated world of the Minimoys - who look suspiciously like troll dolls - where he turns out to be the chosen one, the only one able to pull a sword out of a stone (hackneyed, painful part #4) and proceeds to fall in lust/love with the Minimoy's princess, as voiced by Madonna. Right, a twelve-year-old boy looking lustfully at Madonna (icky, painful part #5).
My wife asks that I point out that the ickyness level was raised by the filmmaker's constant insistance on centering the main character's point of view shots on the unneedfully pneumatic backside of the Madonna-princess character as she swayed herself away, looking bothersomely coquetish. It was very, very icky, indeed.
From there the craptaculr spectacle stays bad as the movie moves forward with nary an intelligent note or engaging chracter. Time passes randomly as the bright sun shines high in the sky while characters ready for bed when in the blink of the eye it's midnight and everybody's asleep. This is while they continue to complain about how little time they have to complete their quest (painful part #6).
There's something about having to travel through seven kingdoms to get the the bad guy - whose name no one except the hero dares to speak (plagairized, painful part #7) - but that's glossed over because the local stereotypical New York Italian minimoy (insulting, painful part #8) just throws them to their destination in a nutshell. You see, these tiny people use the things that the humans drop to make their lives better and easier (stolen, painful part #9) like when Snoop Dog shows up - running a hip-hop club on a record player that seemed terribly anachronistic to me as the film seems to be set well before the days of DJs scratching back and forth but playing that great 1930's hit - "Staying Alive" - and referencing the dance scene from Pulp Fiction (incongruous, painful point #10).
Oh, and one of the humanistic minimoys seems to be the father to a shrew (or at least some sort of vole) who ends up helping save the day. Seriously, human kind of guy gave birth to far-sighted gerbil or shrew or something clearly an animal. (brainless, painful part #11)
Oh, it stunk.
Stunk.
Stunk.
Stunk.
The only redeeming feature that I saw was that the animation was an interesting mix of real sets, built on a miniature scale to accept the animated minimoy characters and fully animated scenes. The skin textures of the characters were surprisingly realistic, seeming to hold a dull plastic sheen very familiar to anyone who has seen a...I think I've pointed it out before...a troll doll.
So, one redeeming feature and at least eleven annoying parts - many of which went on and on and on past the point of minor painfulness. Sounds like the balance falls on the desperately negative side of the ledger.
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