Artemis Fowl: Movie Review

I was always a big fan of the Artemis Fowl series growing up. I believe I reread all of them two or three times. I loved flipping through the pages, reading about how a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind managed to outfox an entire civilization of magical, technologically advanced, beings. So, when I heard that Eoin Colfer’s magnificent series was getting the silver screen treatment, I was naturally excited. When I saw that Commander Julius Root was going to be played by Judi Dench, I grew somewhat less excited. When I saw that Disney had chosen to forgo a theatrical release and instead dump it onto Disney+ when they thought no one was looking, my excitement died altogether.

Before I go further I feel like I should explain why Judi Dench was a bad choice for this role. In the books, Commander Root is a man — as is every other officer in LEPrecon, the Fairy police force, save for the titular Holly Short. The sexism she battles against is a key feature in the books, as is the father-like status of Commander Root. To do away with that plot line demonstrated, in my eyes, a lack of respect towards the source material. Besides, we all know that Vince Vaughn was the only acceptable choice for this role.

But the gender swap notwithstanding, there’s simply not much about this movie that’s any good. There’s some solid scenery, at times. The Fairy cities are beautifully rendered, and the costume department went above and beyond the call of duty. However, this is offset by CGI that looks at least a decade behind the times. The action scenes were so fast and blurry that I could barely understand what was happening onscreen. And then there’s the acting. Ferdia Shaw attempts to portray the cool, calm, and collected Artemis Fowl that fans of the book will know and love, only to fall flat on his face. He comes of as snobbish and winy, more entitled nine year old than criminal mastermind. In all fairness, however, it’s unfair to blame this poor performance on Ferdia alone. It’s not like the script is doing the character any favors. The friendship, mutual respect, and romance between Artemis and Holly that grows over the course of the books is crammed into the space of just twenty minutes in the movie. And that’s one of the saving graces of the film; at just over ninety minutes in length it is thankfully, mercifully short.

Just about the only saving grace of the film is Josh Gadd’s performance as the titular dwarf Mulch Diggums. Despite being forced to work with the godawful script, he pulls his roll off with just enough panache to make you forget that you’re watching a Razzy-worthy dumpster fire for a few minutes. But even Gadd is handicapped at times by RIPD (that movie Ryan Reynolds would prefer you forgot about) quality CGI. You would think that Hollywood would have learned that overloading your movie with low-quality CG is the single most surefire way to make sure it gets panned, but apparently the industry is doomed to repeat this mistake until the end of time.

Artemis Fowl fails utterly to capture the details and spirit of its source material, something that will eternally doom it in the eyes of the fans. But, even if you set the book aside, it fails on its own merits as a movie. Between the bad acting, the terrible CGI, and the somehow even-worse writing, I’d say that Disney would have been better off hiding the film alongside Walt Disney’s head as opposed to quietly shuffling it off onto to Disney+. This movie actually goes beyond the “so bad it’s good” genre of films.

It’s just plain bad.

1/5 Stars