Personal Rating: 3.75 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.57 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 TW: possible sexual assault trigger warning (nothing graphic, but dang it there are some creepy dudes in this and several very uncomfortable moments) Phoebe Lane is a lightning rod for monsters. She and her mom are forced to flee flesh-eating plants, radioactive ants, and blobs from outer space. They survive thanks to Phoebe’s dad—an invisible titan, whose giant eyes warn them where the next monster attack will take place. All Phoebe wants is to stop running from motel to motel and start living a monster-free life in New York or Paris. But when her mom mysteriously vanishes, Phoebe is left to fend for herself in small-town Pennybrooke. That's when Phoebe starts to transform… (goodreads.com) When I first picked up this book, part of me was convinced that the whole summary was actually metaphorical in some way or poetic or something. I did not want it to be, but I was sure it was going to end up being a contemporary book that featured a teenage girl who was “quirky” and enjoyed old monster movies and compared the bad things in her life to those monster movies. This was not that. I’m not sure exactly what about the synopsis made me think it would be a contemporary book, but I’m certainly glad it wasn’t. Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower was a wild ride full of monsters, nasty men, and a fun heroine. Also, a huge man in the sky who was really gross and I’m not really sure what to think of him as a plot device. Basically, this book takes place in a world where all of those old monster movies that everyone references in other movies and TV shows. You know the ones, they’re typically black and white, featuring very outdated special effects and even more outdated treatment of women. Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, King Kong, The Blob, The Fly, The Monkey’s Paw, Them!, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, etc. In the world of this book all of those movies and more take place around the same couple of decades, mid-twentieth-century. Of course, everything is changed just a smidge, probably because of copyright but typically the references are still clear. Phoebe, the main character, is the daughter of the woman who King Kong captured and brought to the top of the Empire State Building, except in this book it’s Emperor Ook, who climbed the Chrysler Building. I don’t want to explain the whole plot to you, but basically, Phoebe and her mom run from town to town, dodging the monster (or Shiver) attacks. They are warned which towns are about to be attacked by “Daddy”, a giant, all seeing, pervy man in the sky who is Phoebe’s father. Yeah… Anyway, I don’t want to spoil too much. Apart from the fact that nearly every man in this book was a disgusting creep, I really enjoyed this book. I would guess that a large portion of my enjoyment came from the fact that I really like the old monster movies that this book references and also because I like to watch those movies with one of my closest friends (*waves* hi friend!). I think reading the book brings back many good memories of the two of us laughing at cheesy special effects and eating junk food together. Would I have enjoyed this book as much if I didn’t know the references and have good memories attached to them? I don’t know. When looking at other reviews for this book it seemed that people who didn’t get the references didn’t like the book as much. One of the other things that I found fun about this book was the fact that it was presented like a movie. The first few pages were reminiscent of title cards and opening credits. There was also a whole chapter of this book which was a musical montage, which I didn’t realize you could do in a book, but I absolutely loved it! I think the musical montage probably would have fallen flat if I didn’t know the song, but since I did (and most people wilI) I think it was effective. Reading this book was a cinematic experience. A few other things I liked:
Some of the things I didn’t like:
So, while I personally found Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower to be an excellent read, I can see how some readers wouldn’t like it. If you do want to read it then I suggest a monster movie marathon beforehand. I’ll bring the popcorn! Thanks for reading! I’d best get going now, it would seem there is a giant blob encasing my house. Time to break out the fire extinguisher and get some ice. Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36373447-attack-of-the-50-foot-wallflower
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The moment every Fowler has been waiting for finally arrived. The Artemis Fowl movie was released after nearly twenty years of being in development. Waiting for this film has been excruciating. Even those who are newer to the fandom have most likely heard about how difficult it has been to get this movie made. Talks of the movie first started soon after the first book was released. Fans rejoiced (or despaired) when Disney bought the rights to this beloved eight book series, for surely now it would get a movie. But it took quite a while. After years of waiting, it was announced that the film would be released on August 9, 2019. Eagerly, we waited, delighted to have an actual date for the film. Then, in November of 2018, a teaser trailer was released and excitement was high. But… then the film had issues with the editing. And it was put off from its original release day, much to everyone’s horor. May 2020 was the new expected release time… until COVID19 hit. Since movie theaters were closed, there would be no chance of the film being released. Would it ever see the light of day at all? Turns out, yes. June 12, 2020, Artemis Fowl was released exclusively on Disney+, the Disney streaming service. And I watched it.
Now, keep in mind as I write this review that I am extremely biased toward the book. If you know me, you are aware that this is one of my favorite books. So, just keep in mind that from the moment I saw the trailer I knew things were going to be different and I was somewhat grouchy about it. I should also warn you that this review may run a touch long and is filled with many, many parentheses sentences (parenthesized sentences? Parenthetical?) , so get some snacks and buckle in. SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST THREE BOOKS AND THE MOVIE WILL BE DISCUSSED — YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Let’s start with the things that I was not fond of in the movie to get the negative out of the way. First off, I hated the pacing of this film. Hated it. I suspect a good deal of the movie was cut, and the many deleted scenes that are available to watch attests to that. I did watch the deleted scenes (though they didn’t help much), but in this review I am only judging the completed film, not what it could have been. In the completed film, everything moved at a hyper pace. It jumped from one scene to the next so fast that I literally felt a bit dizzy with everything happening. It was almost as if they cut to all of the action parts. It sort of felt like a super dumbed down version of the book, where they took out all of the wit and memorable dialogue. They tried to stuff so much story into such a short time, but the introduction, which has Josh Gad as Mulch narrating (and definitely made me think of this scene in Frozen II) seemed fairly long. I think the movie runtime was much too short. Because it was so short and fast paced, there was no character development. Now, fans of the books will have gotten to know Artemis over the course of eight novels, which makes you think we’d have a headstart on getting to know his character in the movie and that I wouldn’t be complaining about no characterization, but movie Artemis is extremely different from book Artemis. He wears hoodies and jeans! He can surf! He plays with Legos! This kid is totally different from the no nonsense, suit wearing child genius we know from the books and I felt like we did not have time to get to know him at all. Or really any of the other characters. Like Butler, who I was severely disappointed in. We barely got to see Butler in action (though we did get a shocking amount of Artemis in action) and there was nothing about the bond between him and the boy in his care and how loyal he is meant to be. He was pretty much just a dude with shockingly blue eyes hanging out with a preteen kid. Along with Juliet (who they turned into his niece for some reason) who they made twelve years old for some reason, and who probably had less screen time than the troll. (Also, can we talk for a minute about how they called Butler by his first name?! Like, no. That is top secret information that you are not supposed to find out until book three. Not even Artemis knows until book three! Why the heck? What the heck?) I’ll probably say this a dozen more times, but this movie desperately needed more character development. I don’t think I would have minded how different the movie characters are from the book characters if they had just given me reason to get attached to them. But instead they threw these empty characters with no obvious emotional connection to each other all together and expected us to care about what happened to them. I felt like much of the dialogue was forced and poorly written. There was nothing in the way that Artemis spoke that made me think he was a criminal mastermind (he even used slang *gasp*). He seemed too much like a normal kid. A smart one, maybe (though the movie pulled a “tell don’t show” on his intelligence), but just a regular kid with money who happened to fall into this big conspiracy involving fairies. Something else that irritated me was that Artemis was too nice. When he wasn’t being nice he seemed childish. Now, there are definitely points in the book when Artemis, despite his big brain, can fall into childish behavior, but that’s usually when there is something going on that he can’t see. In the movie, I felt like any time he was actually being the calm, collected, cold mastermind he seemed like a bratty kid just stating his opinion. One of the examples of this was in a scene that showed one of his therapy sessions. This scene was very close to the opening scene from the second book, the dialogue was so close that it almost felt like the two actors were just reading the book and not actually acting. In it, Artemis and his therapist, Dr. Po, are discussing two things: respect and a chair. In the book, when the conversation does not go the way that Artemis wants, he does become uncomfortable because he isn’t used to anyone finding his weak spots. Dr. Po catches him off guard in saying that he doesn’t think Arty respects anyone he knows. However, the scene is ended when Butler calls Artemis about urgent business and he leaves. In the movie, Artemis gets upset and runs out of the room like, well, a kid who is frustrated. (I also want to mention that the room where they had this therapy session in the movie bothered me so, so much. I’ve never been to therapy, so maybe this is normal, but there was a huge window where all of the other kids waiting for their sessions could just stare at the doctor and Artemis. It was this big open window and I felt exposed just watching it. I liked the sets for this movie, but that just made me uncomfortable. But enough of this little tangent.) Let’s talk about Holly. In the books, one of her greatest motivators is that she is the first female officer of the L.E.P. Recon (she’s also a captain in the books and they only ever called her “Officer Short” in the movie). She has to work twice as hard as anyone because everyone is expecting her to fail. In the movie, there were plenty of other female L.E.P. officers, including Commander Root (who was not as bad as I was thinking she would be, but felt like an entirely different character than the one in the book). Taking away that motivating factor from Holly, they decided that the reason she was not to be trusted by the rest of the fairies was because her father was a traitor. Now, I think I could have gotten over this change… if they had spent some time showing us how Holly felt about it or fleshing out that storyline. I was unhappy with how they treated Holly’s character throughout the movie. She seemed fresh out of the academy, without any experience of the world at all (again, that would have been fine if they’d given reason for it). I also felt like she didn’t really do much in the movie. We didn’t see any of her mid-action ingenuity and adaptiveness that we get in the books. Holly Short is supposed to be able to find ways to defeat trolls and save lives in the nick of time. However, in the movie, in the many action scenes, it seemed like she was just there. Not adding anything apart from her name. I could spend forever unpacking the things that I disliked about this movie, but let’s take some time to look at what I enjoyed. Because it’s always nice to look on the bright side of things (unless you’re a book-accurate troll and bright lights are one of your greatest weaknesses). Mulch Diggums. Yes, Mulch. My favorite character from the books and possibly the best part of the movie. Sure, I had my reservations about Josh Gad playing him *flashes back to the post I made when they released the trailer*, but he really came through. I didn’t think I would like hearing Olaf’s voice saying Mulch’s lines, but Gad added enough gruffness that it sounded just right. In my opinion, if you added a little bit of an Irish accent then that would be the perfect voice for Mulch. The character was not perfect, but I enjoyed him. I don’t know why they decided to make him a “giant dwarf” because I’m fairly certain that he wasn’t in the book (but now I’ve got the whole Mandela effect thing going on in my brain) and I felt that it would have been better if they’d used a bit of CGI to make him shorter (I know you can do it, Disney, I saw you make Chris Evans tiny for the first Captain America movie). Then they wouldn’t have had the oddly placed dialogue throughout about how he wasn’t short. Apart from that and how I am now scarred by his terrifying CGI mouth, I really liked his character. I liked that they kept his dwarf talents and still made him a kleptomaniac. I liked Mulch and he made me smile through the mess of clunky dialogue and horrible pacing. Even if he provided way too much exposition. I also loved the sets. Haven City looked incredible! Not exactly how I pictured it, but fantastic all the same. It was bright and colorful and I loved the diversity of creatures who lived there (they did a great job on the goblins, I thought, even if they weren’t as reptilian as I was expecting). I think I would have preferred it if Fowl Manor were more gothic and dark, but considering they built a whole freaking manor for this movie I can’t complain. I also think that the personality of the house fits better with the personality of the new Artemis… or it would have if they had given him a bit more character. It was light and full of wonder. The interior space was gorgeous (I may have drooled a bit when I saw the library, ngl) and imaginative. The soundtrack was magical. Patrick Doyle (Thor, Brave, Cinderella, Murder on the Orient Express, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) composed it, so it was pretty much impossible that it wouldn’t be magical. The tracks that I thought went best with the movie were “Talented Tunneller” (this one fits the book really well too, I felt), “Time to Believe”, and “That’s My Ride”. Gorgeous, beautiful, stunning soundtrack. I loved it. Costuming for Artemis may have been a bit of a flop (and poor Ferdia Shaw had to wear a three piece suit that was actually a one piece suit made out of rubber) but I loved the L.E.P. uniforms and wings. The green reminded me of chlorophyll on plants, which was cool. I thought Mulch’s outfit was a little bit too close to Hagrid from the Harry Potter series, but I did like his goggles and fingerless gloves. I do not like that they gave Butler glowing blue eyes without any explanation, but at least he wore a suit the whole time. I briefly want to touch on the major differences, without too much criticism, between the book in the movie, just for anyone who is curious. I will try my hardest to keep my opinions on these changes in check, but no promises:
This review/comparison has become ridiculously long, but I have a lot of feelings about it, okay? To sum up these feelings: though I did enjoy watching the movie, I don’t think it was very good. It certainly wasn’t a good adaptation. I was pleasantly surprised by some parts of it, but mostly I was disappointed. After waiting so long, I truly would have loved to see the story from the book played out on screen. It was such a perfect book for a movie and yet they changed so much. I wish I knew why. I still want there to be a sequel to this movie, though I’m fairly certain there won’t be one. I’d like to see where they take it and how they portray Opal Koboi beyond a shadowy figure. I want them to take the time to make me like these new versions of the characters. I am not satisfied with the Artemis Fowl movie and I still dearly want to know what the book would be like as a movie because I feel like Disney has yet to give us that. Image sources: Book cover: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249747.Artemis_Fowl?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=l1trOUTzzL&rank=1 Movie poster: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089630/mediaviewer/rm4248155137 OH MY GOSH. |
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