Caffeinated Clint
‘Shrinkage’ isn’t usually a word you’d associate with filmmaker Luc Besson’s films – if only because the likes of Jason Statham and Bruce Willis are usually headlining them – but in the case of “Arthur and the Invisibles”, its indeed a bottle of baygon that would scare the bejesus out of withered Freddie Highmore.
Freddie Highmore, Mia Farrow, Penny Balfour and the voices of David Bowie, Madonna, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Jimmy Fallon.
‘Shrinkage’ isn’t usually a word you’d associate with filmmaker Luc Besson’s films – if only because the likes of Jason Statham and Bruce Willis are usually headlining them – but in the case of “Arthur and the Invisibles”, its indeed a bottle of baygon that would scare the bejesus out of withered Freddie Highmore.
French filmmaker Besson is best known for his high-concept action/sci-fi thrillers, like “The Transporter”, “The Professional” and “The Fifth Element”, but here, he turns his attention to entertaining the littlies with a computer generated kiddie orgasm in the vein of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and “The Ant Bully”.
Arthur (Freddie Highmore from “Finding Neverland”) is taken – he, of course, has to be transformed into a nail-sized CGI character first – to the land of the Minimoys, a tiny people living in harmony with nature.
There’s enough here to hold the kiddies’ attention, but those looking for something as exciting as seeing Jason Statham outrunning Porsche’s on a Florida highway or watching Milla Jovovich doing a back-flip toward Bruce Willis’s carrier region, might like to invest their time in something a little better structured.
The problem with this one isn’t that it’s story isn’t appealing or that the effects aren’t good-looking, they are, but more so the fact that the screenplay and director – or one or the other – let everything else down. Though the film itself is based on an already-established book, Besson’s film suggests that his motivation here is to merely rob the best parts from other kids movies and stitch them together. In turn, it all comes across a bit messy… and even the kids might be scratching their heads by the 60-minute-mark (considering it runs for over two hours, that’s a worse predicament than it sounds).
DVD extras include a 7-minute ‘voices of Arthur and the Invisibles’ segment that merely reminds viewers that Besson was able to rope in the likes of David Bowie, Madonna and Snoop Dogg to provide voices in the film, a couple of music videos and a fan-made trailer (there was a competition to come up with a trailer for the film).
Rating : 
Reviewer : Clint Morris
