Thursday 27 October 2016

Arthur & the Invisibles 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010)



This film begins with a 60-second recap of the first two movies that mainly serves to underline how superfluous the second film really was.

I'm pleased to say that this third entry in the trilogy is a significant step up from the middle chapter, but that is frankly a very low bar to clear.  I mean you'd probably have to dig a bit before you could set the bar up.

So Maltazard has grown to human size and is at loose in our world, while Arthur and his friends are stuck in the tiny world of the Minimoys.  Apparently that makes them two millimetres tall (about 1/12th of an inch, for you American types), though the films are kind of inconsistent on how they actually scale things on screen.

Anyway, Arthur and Co set out to find his grandfather's potion, which can make a Minimoy grow to human size, but said potion is also in Maltazard's sights, as he wants to enlarge an army of Mosquito warriors to take over the human world.  Quite why he had the last film's highly complex plan to get himself embiggened when there was a potion for it all along, I don't know.  The film appears to hope you won't think to ask that (nor, presumably, are you supposed to ask about the shrinking potion they later introduce, what with "it's really tough to get to the Minimoy world" having been a major plot point of the last two flicks).

There are some decent action set pieces in this final entry of the film, and even a few moments of comedy that work.  They tend to belabour those few moments into the ground when they do happen, of course, but a few hits on the funny bone are better than none.

This film is not terrible, but it really isn't in the class of your Pixar, Disney or Laika films.  There are plenty of better options for entertaining your wee ones (and yourself, for that matter).

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