So all those mythical stories from ancient Greece that feature deities and heroes have all been well documented in the epic poems of Homer although Brooklyn Beckham has contested this saying that none of these stories have ever appeared in The Simpsons but in fairness it’s all Greek to him. But Epic Tails gives us a whistle stop back story about Jason and his Argonauts rescuing the legendary Golden Fleece, but again Brooklyn claims that John Motson still wears it. Said fleece has afforded the ancient Greek city Yolcos protection from the gods and other civilisations. It’s also a city where the animals live in harmony with each other as seen with Pattie, a mouse with dreams of finding adventure on the High sea,s but protected from such wildly dangerous plans by her friend Sam a chunky ginger tom cat.
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But all goes awry when the city unveils a statue to Zeus in a ceremony watched by the gods which infuriates his brother Poseidon who threatens to wash the city away in a tsunami unless a statue of him holding a trident is built in tribute to himself. With only seven days to build it they must also have the trident made in precious metals on an island populated by cyclops. The industrious citizens are in with a small chance of competing the task whereas any British equivalent would have been doomed from the outset by being over budget and overschedule as the builders only worked half days on it as they had another job on at the Acropolis.
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Getting the trident made is a dangerous mission and the only person deemed able to do it is Jason, now a pensioner prone to falling asleep at the slightest moment, joined by his Argonauts, an army of resurrected skeletons with Pattie & Sam hitching a ride along with a one winged, one legged, one eyed seagull. It all seems doomed with an octogenarian narcoleptic leading a bunch of misfits not seen since Menzies Campbell led the Liberal Democrats.
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Their mission finds them encountering giant sea monsters, rock flinging robots, benevolent scorpions and cannibal cyclops and that’s part of the problem in that the cast is too big in a film aimed squarely as younger audiences in a slightly convoluted storyline that sags towards the end of the second act. It owes much to Clash of the Titans and as an animated feature it pales beside the recent Puss in Boots : The Last Wish (reviewed HERE) which played with the genre of nursery rhymes and included plenty of sly jokes for adults as it has done so expertly with the original film and the Shrek franchise where it spun off. It’s telling that the director credit has the additional, ‘with the participation of …….that suggests issues and that the film was made by TAT productions night have the company French company perhaps wanting to reconsider their name for British audiences. That aside Epic Tails is bright and breezy entertainment but is firmly for younger children only
Here’s the Epic Tails trailer…….
