Artemis Fowl (2020) ★
What the hell did I watch? If you’d asked me about the film 10 minutes after it finished, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the first thing about the characters, places, or events so now, a few days afterwards, all I can remember is Josh Gad seemed to be doing an impression of Jack Black, Judi Dench played a green goblin, and Kenneth Branagh – the man who made Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Thor, Murder on the Orient Express, and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – was responsible.
It’s a confused, chaotic, and incoherent mess, a fantasy film without any sense of the fantastic and, even though it is just over 90 minutes long, it feels very long and overstayed its welcome well before the end credits roll. I was completely unaware of the books on which this is based but they must be better than the film – they can hardly be worse.
I only watched this because it was available on the Now TV package to which I currently have access and fitted in a gap I had before a meeting; I’m glad I didn’t pay to watch it at the cinema or on Disney+ and wish I’d used the time reading or watching The Simpsons instead.
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