Despite top-tier talent in director Kenneth Branagh, writer Conor McPherson and actors Colin Farrell, Josh Gad and Judi Dench, the Disney+ 'Artemis Fowl' adaptation is a disappointment.
The tale is largely told by one Mulch Diggums , a fairly unreliable narrator who we come to learn is a giant dwarf . The script by playwrightand Hamish McColl mines the series’ first two books for plot points, and this narrative device feels like an ex post facto attempt to save a botched story.
That changes when Senior disappears from his giant yacht in the South China Sea. The phone at Fowl Manor rings and a raspy voice on the other end, belonging to a shadowy female fairy, demands that Junior locate the Aculos, a powerful and dangerous device, in exchange for his father’s safe return. In his intricate quest for the Aculous, Artemis Jr. kidnaps Holly, bringing all the locked-and-loaded might of the fairies, led by Commander Root , to the human world where they initiate a time freeze . When Dench bursts out of her armored vehicle and growls “Top of the morning!” you feel embarrassed for leprechauns.
We’re repeatedly told he’s an off-the-charts genius, but the results play more as clever and resourceful. Granting someone a tragic backstory does not a character make. In one very on-brand Disney tweak, they’ve killed off Artemis’ mother, Angeline , and made her absence the point of his sullenness.
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