Artemis Fowl review: an overstuffed, half-baked cringe-fest

Kenneth Branagh’s sraight-to-Disney+ film Artemis Fowl, an adaption of the novel of the same name, is as over-stuffed as it is half-baked.

While a few short months ago it may have been destined to be a forgotten box office flop, Kenneth Branagh’s book-to-movie adaptation of Artemis Fowl experienced a strange twist of fate when theatres suddenly shut down. Instead of postponing (as they did with films like Mulan, Jungle Cruise, and Black Widow), Disney decided to release the film on its streaming service, Disney+.

Before we even sat down to watch Artemis Fowl, we couldn’t help but wonder why that was – why would Disney not simply delay the release (as Artemis Fowl already had a non-coronavirus related production delay) as it did with other films? The answer, of course, is that Disney didn’t have faith in the film, and thought that releasing it on Disney+ would be an acceptable loss because it wouldn’t generate as much box office cash as a bigger tentpole like Mulan.

Although we went in hoping that our theory would be proven wrong and that Artemis Fowl would be a surprise gem of a film that Disney made a mistake in not giving a theatrical release, sadly, the film is just as abysmal (if not worse) than we anticipated.

Based on the young adult science-fiction fantasy book series of the same name, Artemis Fowl stars Ferida Shaw as the titular Artemis, a 12-year-old child genius whose world is thrown into chaos when his father suddenly goes missing, and he finds out that all of the stories of magical creatures that his dad told him about as a child are real.

If that sounds like a shaky and uninspired premise to you, that’s because it is – despite having a massive wealth of incredibly well-loved source material to go off of, Artemis Fowl opts to structure its plot around the very barest of bare-bones concepts – a standard MacGuffin hunt that normally works in blockbuster films because it’s only the basis for character exploration and thematic development.

Unfortunately, Artemis Fowl works backward – opting instead to throw the viewer in the deep end immediately – showcasing a vast world of mythical creatures but explaining none of them. Even worse, we also get little to no character development for ANY main character – although attempts are made in the film’s opening sequence to get into Artemis’s psyche, that’s the first and last time the movie even tries to show or tell the audience more about its characters.

That leaves us with a flashy world of colorful creatures that have all of the abilities and powers that come with your standard sci/fi fantasy film, but none of the motivation that makes us care about their struggles and challenges. The closest we come to a sympathetic character is Lara McDonnell’s Holly, a fairy(?) who is shot down and captured by Artemis when investigating her father’s death.

If her capture had come earlier in the film, Artemis Fowl could’ve been an interesting exploration of the friendship or dynamic between Artemis and Holly, but instead, the two rarely interact except to enact a battle plan despite the fact that neither of their interests truly align when you take the time to think about it. The same can be said for Josh Gad’s Mulch, a copy-paste hagrid whose voice is so ear-grating and inconsistent we actively cringed whenever we heard his voice, which was unfortunately frequent because, for whatever reason, Branagh decided that Mulch should be the one to narrate the entire film.

But back to Holly – although she’s played by admirable gumption by McDonnell, the plot with her father is so sudden, unearned, and forcibly added to generate audience sympathy that we formed virtually no attachment to her whatsoever. However, Holly is still more interesting (and easy to root for) than Artemis, who is the actual protagonist of the piece.

Considering the film is titled Artemis Fowl, we assumed that he would have a lot larger of a role in the film than he did – he has shockingly little to do in the entire movie, and his emotional arc is even less-existent than Holly’s. He’s entirely impossible to root for – which, in a better version of this movie, wouldn’t be a critique.

What made the novels so incredibly popular was that Artemis was a supervillain and an iconic YA anti-hero, but instead of having the signature wit and duplicity that we’d hoped for from a crafty genius 12-year-old with dubious morals, we ended up with an annoying know-it-all of a character who wasn’t developed enough to call an anti-hero.

Still, Holly and Artemis are treated far more kindly than the rest of the cast – Butler, Commander Root, and Juliet have no motivation or character traits to speak of other than moving the plot forward, and even relevance to the story can’t be said for Juliet, whose presence in the film could be removed and nothing whatsoever would change.

Although in an alternate universe a film adaption of Artemis Fowl would jumpstart a globetrotting sci-fi/fantasy heist series full of memorable characters and a nuanced protagonist, Artemis Fowl is so abysmally irredeemable that the best thing the cast and crew can do for the franchise is to not make another one.

Did you read the Artemis Fowl books? What’s your favorite movie on Disney+? Sound off in the comments below.