| Arthur and the Invisibles | |
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Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Luc Besson |
| Produced by | Luc Besson Emmanuel Prévost |
| Written by | Luc Besson Céline Garcia |
| Starring | Freddie Highmore Madonna Snoop Dogg David Bowie Ron Crawford Robert De Niro Jason Bateman Jimmy Fallon Mia Farrow Anthony Anderson |
| Music by | Éric Serra |
| Cinematography | Thierry Arbogast |
| Studio | Avalanche Productions Canal+ Sofica Europacorp Narfia Entertainment Group |
| Distributed by | The Weinstein Company |
| Release date(s) | December 13, 2006 (France) January 12, 2007 (United States) February 2, 2007 (United Kingdom) |
| Running time | 94 minutes 104 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $86 million[1] |
| Box office | $107,944,236[1] |
Arthur and the Invisibles (Arthur and the Minimoys in non-English-speaking territories — Arthur et les Minimoys in French-speaking countries) is a French/American part-animated, part-live action feature film adaptation of the 2002 children's book Arthur et les minimoys / Arthur and the Minimoys, and the 2003 sequel Arthur et la cité interdite / Arthur and the Forbidden City, written by filmmaker Luc Besson, who also directed the film. It premiered in limited release in France on November 29, 2006, and received wide releases in a number of countries in the following weeks. In the United States, it opened on December 29, 2006, for one week in Los Angeles, California, with a wider release on January 12, 2007 and it was released in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2007.[2] The film was MGM's first theatrically released animated film since 1996's All Dogs Go to Heaven 2. MGM's rights were dissolved when the movie hit theaters in December 29, 2006.
With a budget of €65,000,000, Arthur and the Invisibles was briefly the most expensive French film production until surpassed by Astérix at the Olympic Games.[3]
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In 1960, 10-year-old protagonist Arthur is living with his grandmother in a quiet country house. His grandfather Archibald has recently gone missing and he sees little of his parents. His grandmother entertains him by reading stories to him of his grandfather's adventures in Africa. One of these stories is about the friendship of the tall, Maasai-like tribe called the Bogo Matassalai with the Minimoys – tooth-sized, elfin beings they believe to be their counterparts. After Archibald had helped the Bogo Matassalai, says the story, they and the Minimoys had given him a large amount of rubies in a show of thanks for helping them. After returning home, Archibald brought the Minimoys with him and lent them his garden as their home. According to the story, he gave the Minimoys the rubies to look after them until he needed them. Arthur has become enamoured of a picture of Selenia, the princess of the Minimoys.
It's shown that Arthur's grandmother has been given a two-day deadline to pay a large sum of money to a building developer named Davido, who has bought her mortgage from the bank and plans to evict the two. Arthur therefore decides to find the rubies in order to pay off the debt. After stumbling across various clues written by his grandfather, Arthur finds the key to the Minimoys' world. He accidentally puts his grandmother into a deep sleep by dropping sleeping drops into her water and as she begins to snore, he continues. He is met in the garden by the Bogo Matassala, who show Arthur how to get into the Minimoys' world by shrinking down to their size and becoming a Minimoy himself. The Transformation alters his body giving him a big head with pointy ears, longer legs and arms, and spiky white hair. This is done by means of a telescope and the power of a shining full moon. When Arthur is underground with the Minimoys, he learns of a danger to the little people's future, posed by the plans of Maltazard, the leader of an army of mosquito-riding rebels named 'Seides' living in nearby "Necropolis", who plan to conquer the Minimoys by flooding their city. Maltazard is said to have been a Minimoy war hero corrupted by a seductive weevil, by whom he has a son called Darkos. After his corruption, Malthazar became a warlord known as the "Evil M", keeping Archibald as his prisoner and the rubies as his throne.
Arthur, reflecting his legendary British namesake, draws a sacred sword from its recess, which he then uses to protect his new friends from Malthazar's soldiers. The king gives permission for Arthur to travel to Necropolis, sending with him the princess Selenia and her younger brother. Armed with Arthur's new sword – the use of which they share – the trio embark. En route to Necropolis they are put in danger by Maltazard's soldiers numerous times. Arthur is dismayed to discover that the irrigation system of drinking straws he had made to water radishes for his grandmother is being cut apart by the soldiers, who are making plans to use them as water pipes for the coming flood. It is revealed that a flood would be especially devastating to the Minimoys due to the fact that the species cannot swim. During their travel Selenia reveals that at her age of 1000 (counted in the blossoming seasons of the royal flower, which corresponds to Arthur's), she must find a husband within two days. Over the course of the journey, Arthur comes to fall in love with Selenia, a fact she sees and uses to her advantage.
Eventually, the questors arrive in Necropolis, where the stubbornly independent Selenia takes the sword and leaves the others. Before doing so, she kisses Arthur, marking him as her husband and the future king. Selenia then confronts Maltazard alone. Maltazard wishes the first kiss of the princess to restore his original beauty; after learning she has already kissed Arthur and she can no longer give him her powers, he decides to kill her. She is captured and incarcerated in a cell where she finds her companions, who have also been seized.
In the back of the cell, they find Arthur's grandfather, who like Arthur has become a Minimoy altering his body the same way as Arthurs. He has been teaching his knowledge to Maltazard in exchange for food. Selenia feels defeated, but Arthur comforts her.
Maltazard allows them to escape 3 minutes ahead of the flood, which they do by using a clockwork car that Arthur possessed, in his human form, until Davido kicked it down the drain.
During the adventure, Arthur's crush on Selenia has been supplemented by comradeship, as well as by her own affection for him. When Arthur learns of a Minimoy custom stating that newlyweds should not kiss for the second time until after ten moons, Selenia decides she does not wish to wait and gives Arthur a long, passionate kiss before he returns to his human form. He now has an hour wherein to save the Minimoys from the flood. Archibald returns with him to the human world, and to human form, and is reunited with Arthur's grandmother.
With the help of a royal advisor's long-lost son, Milo, Arthur is able to find the pipe on the surface that goes straight down into Necropolis, when Milo signals him by directing sunlight into the ruby and out to the surface. Arthur redirects the flood to Necropolis by dropping a tennis ball down the pipe, which smashes the drinking straw pipes being used to direct the water and blocks the tunnel it was heading through. The Minimoys are saved from the flood; Necropolis is flooded instead. Maltazard abandons the plan, his army, and his son, and flees. The force of the water ejects the rubies and Miro.
Arthur and Archibald pay Davido with one ruby; he tries to take all, but the Bogo Matassalai capture him and give him to the authorities (scene deleted in the U.S. edition).
The story closes with the vows spoken by Arthur in his human form to Selenia, who sits high up on a branch in a tree, to wait patiently until the time is right for them to be together.
The ending credits then proceed, alongside scenes of every significant character (as well as the director, Luc Besson) appearing in Minimoy form to bow. Nena was in it to.
The animation was done by the French company BUF Compagnie, which hired approximately 100 animators, most of them from French animation schools and without any previous experience. Besson wanted a photorealistic environment, and BUF initially used microlenses to film physical environments, but eventually instead used photogrammetry, where a digitized photograph of a real object is manipulated with a computer. Sets were built to 1:3 scale, which allowed the animators to use natural elements, such as plants and grass. While the film did not use motion capture, real actors were used as reference, and recorded with 13 to 14 video cameras, but without the markers used in motion capture. Besson directed their performances. In terms of lip sync with actors' dialog, the French animators could not cope with the English phonemes. For Madonna and David Bowie, a camera was used to record their lips to help the animators. The animation was done with proprietary software.[4]
The film was budgeted at $86,000,000.[1] In its first two weeks in cinemas in France Arthur earned over US$20 million.[1]
Arthur and the Invisibles received mixed to generally unfavourable reviews. In the United States, the movie's Los Angeles run garnered 21% positive reviews at the critics-aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com.[5] Los Angeles Times reviewer Alex Chun wrote that, "Director Luc Besson admits he knew nothing about animation before he started this project, and it shows".[6] Variety's Robert Koehler called it "alienating and dislikable" and specifically noted that, "Having African-American thesps Snoop Dogg and Anthony Anderson voice creatures that are basically humanoid monkeys shows poor taste".[7] Many found it derivative of sources ranging from King Arthur's sword-in-the-stone to the films The Dark Crystal and The Ant Bully, which itself was based on a children's book written three years before Besson's. "It all simply looks as if [conceptual artist Patrice] Garcia and Besson couldn't decide on any one thing to copy", said Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, "so they copied them all".[8] Lovece also noted that, "the whole thing gets seriously creepy when [the animated versions of] the grown-up, pinup-beauty princess and the 10-year-old boy fall for each other. Mary Kay Letourneau comes uncomfortably to mind".
Besson, in a May 2007 interview, blamed American distributor The Weinstein Company for the film's poor critical reception in the U.S., saying "Why the critics didn't like Arthur was because [Weinstein] changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American. ... America and the UK were the only countries where the films were changed. The rest of the world has the same film as France".[9]
On February 1, 2007, the film received the Imagina Award in the category Prix du Long-Métrage.[10]
On October 1, 2007, Mylène Farmer was awarded the NRJ Ciné Award for her dubbing of Sélénia's voice in Arthur and the Minimoys.[11]
The US edition DVD was released on May 15, 2007 with just the English-language version and cut down about 10 minutes from the original version. The international DVD versions include the uncut English-language version and the local-language version.
After a screening test in the United States, the Weinstein company edited the film. Approximately nine minutes were cut. Most of the edits pertained to the love story taking place between Arthur and Selenia. The Scenes were:
The entire storyline involving the parents and their greed for money was also deleted, cut short by a small cutscene and a narrator explaining that worrying over their son was all they needed to reform completely.
The British version of the film, also distributed by the Weinstein Company, similarly lacked these scenes.
The Minimoys featured in the first Augmented Reality Nestle Chocopic cereal box with the help of Dassault Systemes technology 3DVIA Virtools.[12]
Arthur and the Invisibles was followed by a 2009 sequel, Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard based on a novel of the same name and another sequel in 2010 titled Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds based on the final book in the series. The two films were edited together and released in the UK and Ireland as a single film titled Arthur and the Great Adventure.
All three sequels received mixed to poor reviews.
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