Epic is an animated children's movie about Mary Katherine, or as she likes to be called, M.K. The audience gathers from the beginning of the movie that her parents separated when she was young, and M.K. lived with her mom. Now that her mother has died, however, M.K. is going to live with her dad. She obviously has some worries over what her life is going to be like. Her dad's house is out in the middle of nowhere. (As the cab driver says:" That's not a house, it's termites holding hands.") When M.K. arrives, he isn't even home. When he comes in, he's in a rush over some activity his cameras mounted around the woods picked up, and doesn't even notice M.K.
As it turns out, he's spent his whole life trying to find enough evidence to support his claim of an "advanced civilization of tiny people" in the woods. To M.K., this sounds delusional, and crazy. So she plans to run away (she points out that she is almost "old enough to be on my own"). Just as she's leaving, her dog runs off into the woods. While trying to find "Ozzie", M.K. sees something falling through the air. When it lands, she curiously peers at the small-- human! The tiny person hands her a small flower pod, which changes M.K. into an equally tiny person.
The rest of the story is an adventure, er, epic about the chivalrous and noble "leafmen", M.K., evil "boggans", and the importance of the small flower pod. The leafmen are the knights of the forest civilization. They're good, kind, and amazing in battle. Boggans are evil villains living in a black tree stump, who blacken and kill everything they touch. M.K. is trapped in a tiny body, trying to help save the forest creatures. The flower pod is the only hope to stop the black poison of the boggans from taking over the whole forest.
Epic has the usual evil villains, and noble knights. Although it was very predictable, I still enjoyed it. I got into the story a lot, surprisingly. When our TV stopped the movie to load RIGHT DURING THE BIG ACTION, our living room erupted in "NOO!" and "AWWW!" "Why just NOW?!"
I really enjoyed the animation and forest-people costumes. The leafmen warriors have green, leaf armor that was just awesome for my fantasy-loving brain. And they rode hummingbirds...(My littlest brother, who is big into Narnia-like battles with swords, shields, and bows, really enjoyed the leafmen/boggan war.) The queen also had a dress that was flower petals :)
The humor of the story was courtesy of a slug and a snail. (Mub and Grub) There was definitely some fun parts. Some quotes to add to our "movie quote library".
I would recommend Epic if you're looking for a fun family movie. There was some combat between the leafmen and boggans. Because we don't have really little kids at our house, I wouldn't be able to say if it would be too scary for little kids. I think it really depends of the person. There was also a small romance-y bit between one of the leafmen and M.K.
The idea of team work (The leafmen's motto is: " Many leaves, one tree. We're all individuals, but we're still connected. No one's alone.") , and, in the end, M.K. and her dad's relationship was a big theme in the movie. It had a sweet ending, of course.
We aren't going to put it on our family's "to buy" movie list, but Epic is a fun.... epic.
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