Film Review with Robert Mann – Arthur and the Great Adventure

2nd January 2011

Arthur and the Great Adventure *

Director Luc Besson is best known for his distinctive thrillers, two of his best known and most highly appreciated movies probably being Leon and The Fifth Element, but in 2007 we saw the release of his first foray into a very different kind of filmmaking – family films. Adapted from the 2002 children’s book Arthur and the Minimoys and its 2003 sequel Arthur and the Forbidden City, Arthur and the Invisibles, a mix of live action and animation, was also the director’s first attempt at animation and the result was not very pretty.

Simply put the film was not very good and moviegoers quickly realised this, the film not only being rejected by film critics but also by moviegoers in America, where the film earned weak numbers, and in the UK, where the film had a so-so performance, only avoiding performing worse due to a lack of choices for families to see in cinemas. With the film performing so poorly and shockingly carrying a very large production budget, you would probably wonder why anyone would even think that a sequel was necessary but apparently Besson himself did. The film actually proved a hit in Europe where it earned enough attention to not only get one sequel made but two, of which Arthur and the Great Adventure (originally titled Arthur and the Vengeance of Maltazard) is the first. Originally scheduled for a UK cinema release way back last February, it’s something of a mystery as to why they even bothered given this sequel a cinema release at all after postponing it so long – for all the interest in it, it may as well have gone straight to DVD here. A sequel to a film that even I can hardly remember, it is unlikely that Arthur and the Great Adventure will hold much interest for anyone, as where the original was simply poor this one is instead abysmal.

Arthur (Freddie Highmore) and his parents, Rose (Penny Balfour) and Armand (Robert Stanton), are about to leave the home of Arthur’s grandparents, Archibald (Ron Crawford) and Rose (Mia Farrow), for their own home but, before they can do so, Arthur receives a distress call sent by the Minimoys, the invisible people who live in the back garden, and he rushes to their aid. But what he doesn’t know is that the plea for help is all part of a plan by the evil Maltazard (voiced by Lou Reed) to trick Arthur into entering the Minimoys’ world, reversing the magic that makes him bigger. Now it’s Arthur that stands at just half an inch tall and Maltazard who is larger than life and running riot in Arthur’s world. With help from the beautiful Princess Selenia (voiced by Selena Gomez) and clumsy Prince Betameche (voiced by Jimmy Fallon), Arthur sets out on a mission to become human size again so that he can stop Maltazard before it’s too late. But, at his new diminutive proportions, has Arthur got what it takes to defeat the evil Emperor?

French film directors are often noted for their distinctive filmmaking style but none of this is really evident in Arthur and the Great Adventure. Just as was the case with the first film in the ‘Arthur’ trilogy, this sequel lacks the stylistic touches that are present in many of Luc Besson’s films, so much so that it is hard to believe that this even is a Luc Besson film. The animation is passable but can’t avoid looking cheap, lacking texture and detail and with apparent attempts at achieving a photorealistic look failing, the closest the film gets to actually looking real being in the parts that actually are real and then when the animation and the live action come together they really don’t blend together all that well. There is also no real innovation or imagination to the design and while it seems like Besson is trying to emulate a sense of whimsy or quirkiness, the film just seems downright bizarre, this being a very unusual film, but not in a good way, and one that just gets weirder and weirder as the film progresses. Additionally, when Maltazard take on hideously unconvincing human form, he transformation is realised through some abysmal make-up work. The panache that Besson has displayed in the action department of so many other films is also completely absent, both the miniature scale and the full size scale action sequences failing to impress and things in these scene often moving so fast that it is hard to keep a track of what is going on. Besson’s writing is even worse than the visuals, with atrocious plotting, extremely lacklustre dialogue and lame attempts at humour, such as a clichéd Darth Vader gag, making for a film that is as hollow beneath the surface as it is at the top. It doesn’t help that knowledge of the first film’s storyline is almost essential to be able to follow what is going on here but it is unlikely that even if you have seen the original film you will actually remember it, making this film’s entire story a complicated mess. With dreadful material also comes some very bad acting, and the grown up actors – this applies to Farrow, Crawford, Balfour and Stanton as well as numerous actors in secondary roles – in particular, are quite shockingly bad. The voice cast – which includes the likes of Snoop Dogg, Stacy Ferguson and Will i Am in addition to those aforementioned – also doesn’t bring much to the film and it is also interesting to note that the many big names who contributed their voices to the first film – David Bowie, Madonna, David Suchet, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Anthony Anderson, Jason Bateman and Emilio Estevez – have not reprised their roles for this sequel. Clearly they all realised that this film just isn’t worthy of such talents. A film that is not simply badly made but also one that really drags, Arthur and the Great Adventure may just about keep undemanding kids amused but anyone else will just be bemused. So, less Arthur and the Great Adventure, more Arthur and the Incredibly Mediocre Adventure.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

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