Review Roundup: What Did Critics Think of ARTEMIS FOWL?

Disney's new live-action film "Artemis Fowl" was released exclusively on Disney + on Friday, June 12.

Based on the best-selling young adult book by Eoin Colfer, "Artemis Fowl" delivers a big cinema-sized experience for audiences of all ages to experience for the first time on Disney+ in the comfort of their homes. From director Kenneth Branagh, it is a fantastical epic adventure, resplendent with beautiful landscapes and spectacular visual effects that will transport viewers to magical new worlds. "Artemis Fowl" stars newcomer Ferdia Shaw in the title role alongside Lara McDonnell, Josh Gad, Tamara Smart, Nonso Anozie, Josh McGuire, Nikesh Patel and Adrian Scarborough, with Colin Farrell and Judi Dench.

Find out what critics thought of the film below!

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Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

"Artemis Fowl" stockpiles ingredients from successful series of yore, whether "Star Wars" (a robed villain with a technologically tweaked croak), Harry Potter (the dwarf played by Josh Gad surely shares a barber with Robbie Coltrane's Hagrid) or "Lord of the Rings" (the commotion of sprites and goblins). Even the suits-and-shades aesthetic of "Men in Black" finds a place. Somewhere in this overstuffed grab bag is the title character (Ferdia Shaw), a 12-year-old boy genius and - by the end - professed criminal mastermind. In the hubbub, he gets precious few opportunities to show off his masterminding.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

The Disney version of Artemis Fowl covers everything in a blanket of bland that suggests the dull juvenilia in the film versions of Percy Jackson and The Golden Compass rather than the vigorous battle between good and evil that marked the novels. Instead, worlds collide at an Italian wedding where an escaped goblin goes on a rampage. "Most humans are afraid of gluten," says Mulch, noting that there's no way they can handle a goblin. The best way to handle this relentlessly nice movie that deserved a touch of nasty, is to enjoy the few flashes of what have been before the sheer heaviness of the production stomps out all the fun.

Alison Willmore, Vulture

But to watch Artemis Fowl is to also feel like studios have maybe lost the thread when it comes to what was appealing about these would-be franchise launchers in the first place. The movie isn't slavishly faithful enough to its source material to please hard-core fans, and yet its many tweaks DON'T improve or make it any more compelling to the uninitiated. There's not a trace of wonder or joy to its world-building, which enlists visuals that look recycled from other recent blockbusters and centers on woefully uninteresting action sequences.

Roxana Hadadi, AV Club

Artemis Fowl is at once overcomplicated, with its feuding fairy factions and allusions to the Fowl family's grand patriarchal lineage, and underdeveloped. There is never a real sense of who this character is, beyond a rich kid who holds most everyone in contempt. Meanwhile, the villain, generically planning to "systematically wipe out all of mankind," is never unmasked. And the film has an unfortunate tendency to sideline all of its female characters: During one climactic fight sequence, Holly gets snagged in a chandelier, leading Artemis to pick up her magical blaster and do the job of an 84-year-old officer in what is essentially the fairies' militarized police force better than she can. Elsewhere, the film introduces Juliet (Tamara Smart), niece of the Fowl family's butler, only to give her nothing to do but serve sandwiches and sit alone in Fowl Manor while everyone else goes on adventures-not the best way for the film to treat one of its only two Black characters.

Angie Han, Mashable

Were you hoping Artemis would at least be a likable hero? He is, alas, a condescending little s who informs his teacher that Albert Einstein is the only person he will deign to treat as an intellectual equal. In Artemis' defense, the teacher was reciting Artemis' own backstory to him for no reason, which would make anyone cranky. Unfortunately for Artemis (Ferdia Shaw), his is a world in which every conversation starts with "As you know..." or "Need I remind you..."

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