It felt like Epic took an epoch to get rollin’. But when it did … it was still underwhelming. I guarantee you’ll enjoy Epic equally as much as you remember it. Something to do with bug-men, right? I kid. Professor Bomba (are you kidding me? “Bomba,” really?), well Professor Bomba (voice of Jason Sudeikis) insists that there are miniature men living in the forest. Our thoughts on his sanity are not encouraged by his appearance. Imagine Sean Penn as Belle’s father and you’re close. Backstory is the obsession with this particular thesis cost him his wife and daughter. Family be damned, this is science!
Of course, there are miniature men living in the forest, but the jury is still out on Bombasanity.
FF to our film. The wife has passed, and teen daughter Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) comes to live with dad. There’s a lot of science crap she has to wade through. This is what happens when an eccentric man lives alone in the woods. Correction: this is what happens when a benevolent eccentric man lives alone in the woods. Oh, and the leaf men like to tease Professor Bomba. They deliberately leave hummingbird saddles and li’l flute bongs lying around in an abandoned section of forest and then snicker at his lack of progress. Meanwhile, the Baggins or Buggles or, wait, the Boggans, led by Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) are fighting a war to make holes in teeth or rot the forest or something.
All the leaf men are soldiers. All the Boggans are destroyers. Can’t we all just get along?
M.K. happens upon the war for natural order and gets shrunk to leaf-woman size upon trying to protect a falling bud. At 
this point, you’ve basically got another episode of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It’s difficult but not impossible to care about this dilemma. M.K. immediately finds a leaf hunk suitor and a smooth-talking Romeo slug although thinking about how either mates seems rather creepy. Luckily, this is a cartoon and we’re not forced to imagine such.
Epic couldn’t be further from an apt description of this film – it’s small in thought and scope. There’s tree-huggery hinted at, but the conflict comes down to a battle over the control of forest rot. There is no connection between human action and natural disintegration, so any message to take home will mostly be about how you mount your hummingbird in order to face off with the Cavity Creeps. If you got somethin’ more than that, by all means share; it’s probably more interesting than the film.
Miniscule plantmen down in the mud
Fight to the death with chlorophyll blood
Found a new queen
Will she be mean?
Don’t worry, li’l gal, she’s your bud
Rated PG, 102 Minutes
D: Chris Wedge
W: James V. Hart, William Joyce, Daniel Shere, Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember
Genre: Tree-hugger. Literally.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Children destined to be future vegetarians
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: “Ewwwww, a slug.”
