Main cast: Ferdia Shaw (Artemis Fowl II), Lara McDonnell (Holly Short), Josh Gad (Mulch Diggums), Tamara Smart (Juliet Butler), Nonso Anozie (Domovoi Butler), Nikesh Patel (Foaly), Colin Farrell (Artemis Fowl I), and Judi Dench (Commander Julius Root)
Director: Kenneth Branagh

At long last, the troubled Artemis Fowl finally makes an appearance after eating up a whopping amount of money equivalent to the GDPs of several third-world countries… only to show up on a streaming service. Sure, we can blame COVID-19, but come on, if the movie had been progressing swimmingly from day one, it likely wouldn’t have taken this long – they wanted this movie to be a start of a franchise back in 2001 – to get things in motion.

Now, I haven’t read the books, so I am walking into this movie on a clean slate, with no expectations or preconceived notions. Actually, I don’t even know anything about the plot beforehand. When I have to pause early on to look up the plot on the relevant Wikipedia entry in order to understand what I have just seen, that’s a sure sign of the mess this movie turns out to be.

So, we have this annoyingly smug and obnoxious brat, Artemis Fowl, who also has to sport an insulting hairstyle to boot. Possessing the ability to cut down adults without facing any repercussions, this character represents the fantasy gone wild of every brat who has a grudge against grown-ups. Hmm, maybe that’s the whole point of that character. Artemis is apparently so smart at planning heists, that this movie is basically a cake walk for him. His equally brilliant and criminally-inclined father teaches him that the world also has magic, with fairies and unicorns and all.

So, one day, when Arte-dad is MIA, and Arte-brat has only three days to recover a super-magically whatever called the Aculos if he wanted to see his father again, the adventure begins. His father’s butler, whom I heard was made into a black man just for this movie because in a progressive world, black people are made to serve rich white brats, even shows Arte-brat his father’s Batcave full of magical paraphernalia because the brat must rise and make the studio Harry Potter money.

Now, the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that it’s generic. The CGI looks like every CGI in CGI-heavy films out there – and for some reason, at times the CGI looks dated as well – and the characters never rise beyond familiar stereotypes: the insufferable lead character with superlative skills and plot armor, the spunky female sidekick, the big black butler, the fat shady dwarf, the frequently absent father figure, et cetera.

The adult cast is fine, although Colin Farrell really should consider looking for a new agent. The kids, though… Ferdia Shaw is going to make or break the show, and for me, I find everything about his portrayal of Arte-brat just painfully cringe-inducing. We have this childish brat speaking in sentences that are clearly written by adults in their forties or fifties, acting up a snotty storm and yet having adults walking in tiptoes around him. I’m sure kids below the age of ten will find this character a hero, but me, I just want to see this brat spanked hard.

Additionally, the movie feels disjointed and choppy, as if there had been a fight in the editing room that left the people involved with some kind of debilitating mental condition that caused them to be unable to do their job normally. There is no sense of wonder or awe despite the abundance of CGI; everything in this movie feels by-the-numbers. I wonder whether this is one of those movies that had been produced by committee, retooled and remade during post-production by studio executives who had no confidence in the product turned in by Mr Branagh. It certainly lacked passion to qualify as such.

At any rate, it’s probably a good thing that Artemis Fowl is on Disney’s streaming service, because that way, people who are disappointed by this joyless time-waster can still easily find at least five more interesting things to watch for their subscription fee. This one, though… I won’t be surprised if there were sequels planned, as these streaming services need all the crap they can get to fill all those empty slots, but I am pretty sure the sequel will have a much smaller budget than what this turd cost them.