Epic Tails

The city of Yolcos (now Iolcus) sits north of the Pagasitic Gulf, on the slopes of Central Magnesia above the Port of Volos. It was home to King Aeson, dethroned by Pelias, who bade Jason take the Argo in a quest previously told by Apollonius in the Argonautica. Some time later, and in effect once upon a time, he had returned with a Golden Fleece. An artefact of power that brought to Yolcos an era of prosperity and peace.

This Golden Fleece age had several consequences. The town is sheltered from the elements by a bubble of force. It is a cornucopia of crops, several of which are anachronistic. Obligate carnivores like cats are rendered sufficiently peaceable that they become vegetarian librarians, fostering orphaned mice. The wharf rats are organised into a ninja clan, with ninja exams. No mean feat nine (or 12) centuries and change before the first stirrings of the Shinobi, and with Wakkanai roughly 11,000 kilometres' walk away unless you take a shortcut through Kazakhstan and eliminate a few steps going through Mongolia. That's the kind of journey animated mice have undertaken before. There's a sequence cribbed from The Rescuers: Down Under that might suggest how tiny feet managed that feat if Fievel's adventures in An American Tail weren't the model.

Admittedly, realism is not entirely the goal when the plot is driven by accidentally angering Poseidon with a statue dedicated to Zeus. That's the Olympians voiced by, among others, comedian Rob Beckett as the King of the Sea, and CBeebies presenter Giovanna Fletcher as the distaff half of the Pantheon (all the girl ones). As usurper of the Titanomachy, the triumphant architect of the Gigantomachy, the lightning-wielding God of the Sky, the ayatollah of filling baby-strollers, none other than... Josh Widdicombe.

A French animated film re-dubbed for English-speaking audiences, it suffers from all the usual nonsenses that come from re-casting voices as regionalisation. I'm always minded of how Shrek replaced the voices of characters physically modelled on the internationally recognisable Larry King and Joan Rivers with Jonathon Ross and Kate Thornton. Voice-acting is a distinct skill, and while one can often get past an absence of synchronisation, these forms of stunt casting bring weird externalities. I know that when I imagine what the Allfather of Olympus sounds like, be it in the form of a bull, an oak, an eagle, or any of the various guises in which he beget various other deities and demigods, it's not as an uncredited Hobbit or the curly-haired one from The Last Leg.

It's a minor note in truth, but one of several places where Epic Tails grates. There are frequent emotional stakes that mostly involve guilt and blame, there's some amount of bullying, and stakes are restated sufficiently often that its 95 minutes feel like they've been stitched together from episodes of something else.

There are some lovely bits of design. Pattie (who's eponymous in original title Pattie & The Wrath Of Poseidon) is a charming mouse dreaming of adventure. She joins a peg-legged and hook-winged seagull on the crew of the Argo, captained by a centenarian Jason and rowed by his reanimated Argonauts. Across them, and their various foes, there are some neat touches of design.

Movie references abound. It starts with the words "As far back as I can remember" and in addition to Goodfellas there are nods, winks, and outright lifts from The Godfather, with at least one offer that cannot be refused being made from beneath rodent eyebrows that owe a debt to Scorsese's own. There are Cyclopean trolls with Aardmanesque inventions of which Wallace (if not Gromit) would be proud. Their costumes include nods to the Mad Max series, one of them modelled on Auntie Entity. Another wears a bandolier of masks including that of the Mandalorians, Lord Humungus, the Spartans of 300, Magneto and a Thanos-style glove. Elsewhere the Immortan's sigil is found on an important keyring, and inevitably there's a Wilhelm scream. Audible nods are present too, a sequence from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is used more than once, and there's an extended montage that's set to the entire A-Team theme. That's a nod in the same way a child might insist they're not sleepy before surrendering entirely to Hypnos.

All that at least has a chance of entertaining older audiences against a host of brazen exposition, including an explanation of a brass automaton that patrols a treasure-bearing island. Characters are constantly exclaiming that things are their fault, or someone else's fault, and it seems that there's never a sense that the fault is hubris or the capriciousness of the Gods. That whimsy from Olympus includes Poseidon's catchphrase (used three times!) of 'Hasta la vista'. At other times it almost seems as if directions are being read - "what am I doing running along the tentacle of a Kraken!?" exclaims one character. The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is running along the tentacle of a Kraken.

That sea monster is a present from a "Viking cousin," there's a whole panoply of jarred terrors displayed in which I spotted Godzilla and Mario's foe Bowser, but other monsters are missing. The opening sequence borrows stylistically from 8-bit videogames and tapestries, replacing Scylla and Charybidis with islands that chomp. It's one of the neater touches in the film, and that's possibly it's biggest frustration.

There's some lovely character design. The Golden Fleece isn't as adorable as Shaun the Sheep, but has bubbly aesthetic charms. There's a moment where (as with Everything Everywhere All At Once) one is minded to use Ratatouille as a verb, but the sense of summoned memories is hard to escape.

This is a third feature for animation trio David Alaux, and Eric and Jean-Francois Tosti. They turned their series The Jungle Bunch into a film, and Astro Kid (aka Terra Willy: Unexplored Planet) was also re-dubbed for English-speaking audiences. There are so many movies for which this is true that the underlying pattern eventually emerges. Released on 10 February ,it gets its opening weekend aligned with England and Scotland's 2023 Spring School Holidays. Welsh and Northern Irish weans aren't really missing out. There's some action, excitement, lashings of snot and vomit, and excellent examples of problem-solving through teamwork and self-belief. The morality tale elements are less heavy-handed than many of the others, but its assembly doesn't quite work.

Given that the Argo is more than a hundred years old it's not a surprise that during its voyage they put in to Syracuse for repairs. I must admit I was disappointed they didn't take the opportunity (at least in the English dub) to reference the Ship of Theseus, or Trigger's Broom. There's a philosophical conundrum in the question as to how much you can replace before something is no longer itself. There's a critical question with Epic Tails in how much one can substitute before it gets worse. Though diverting enough, I'll borrow, myself, from children's entertainment and ask why don't you [consider] going outside and doing something less boring instead.