Arthur and the Invisibles (or, “Arthur et les Minimoys“) is another attempt by Sony Pictures to bring out something to rival, PIXAR, Dreamworks, and Disney; once again they’ve not quite managed it. It’s a combination of two storylines we’ve seen a million times – young boy must find treasure to stop his family (or in this case his grandmother (Miah Farrah) from being evicted, and someone becoming very small and entering a whole new world. For such familiar themes to work nowadays needs either a new slant on the tale or a clever script, and sadly Arthur and the Invisibles has neither of these.

It’s a combination of live action and computer animation, and swaps between the two fairly frequently. Personally I found this rather annoying, which I guess is partly due to the fact that compared to the fantastic, vibrant world of CGI the real world here looks kind of… well… dull. The actors do relatively well but there’s little they can really made of the trite script. The only film I remember seeing from Director Luc Besson is “The Fifth Element”, which left me feeling immensely underwhelmed, and I had the same feeling with Arthur. There is so much potential here but none of the characters are remotely explored, so much scope for humour was completely wasted, and the storyline fitted together so neatly that it had no surprises. There were also a number of rather obvious errors in the plot (set in the 1960, but with “Theme to S-Express” – released in 1988 0 playing in a club in the world of the “Minimoys”) – the really small guys Arthur must find out how to visit, get treasure, save day etc.

So the storyline plods along, the actors do their thing and the voice actors do theirs. The voice acting is pretty good, and the live-action scenes reasonable. The voice cast includes Maddonna (Princess Selenia), Jimmy Fallon (Betameche, her younger brother), and Robert De Niro (the King, their father, and without question the finniest character in the film.) Young Freddy Highmore plays Arthur and voices him in the animated sequences, and does a good job. David Bowie has fun voicing the “Evil M”, whose name must not be said aloud (now there’s an original concept…).

(The voice actors above are naturally enough those in the English version of the film.)

The script and particularly dialogue is very run of the mill stuff though, do the voice talent was largely wasted. It contained virtually no jokes that would require anyone over the age of 5 to understand, and relied very heavily on the visuals for humour. The CGI animation lets us in on the world of the Minimoys, and the computer animation is admittedly a glorious visual spectacle. The visuals and animation are wonderful, if only there had been a good script to go with it this would have been an extremely enjoyable film. The only clever bit of the whole storyline was the reason an African tribe of very tall people tried to find the Minimoys in the first place.

As it is, Arthur and the Invisibles is really only any good for very young children. I didn’t hate the movie but to me it never really shifted out of second gear.

Other Information

Year of release: 2006
Runtime: 102 minutes
Rating: PG for fantasy action and brief suggestive material (so brief that you might not even notice it’s there!)

Luc Besson has apparently stated that this will be his last movie as a Director.

Some have suggested that this movie would have been better received if it hadn’t come out not long after The Ant Bully. Certainly there were similarities and I preferred The Ant Bully to this, but it’s inherent problems would have been the same in any case.



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Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8