Twelve year old Artemis Fowl Junior lives at Fowl Manor with his widowed father, who is also named Artemis. Artemis Senior goes missing from his boat, accused of the theft of several priceless artifacts found aboard. Artemis Junior then receives a call from a hooded figure. Holding the elder Fowl captive, the hooded figure gives Artemis three days to recover the Aculos, which Artemis Senior has stolen and hidden.
The junior Fowl is perplexed by all this until his bodyguard, Domovoi "Dom" Butler, shows him a hidden library where generations of Fowls have catalogued proof of the existence of magical creatures. Suddenly his father's obsession with folklore makes a lot more sense to young Artemis.
Young Artemis may only be twelve, but he's also a genius (or so the film tells us), and he immediately swings into action with a plan to capture a member of the fairy community and utilise the captive as leverage to acquire the Aculos and save his father. However, as events will soon reveal, there is a significant flaw with this plan: the fairies don't know where the Aculos is, either. Not that they would be keen to hand it over even if they were.
Ostensibly based on the novel of the same name, Artemis Fowl the movie actually retains only the basic "Artemis kidnaps a fairy" premise, wedging in a whole bunch of new motivations for this venture and then having the actual caper play out in a very different, far less coherent manner.
Because oh boy, this film makes no sense. The hooded figure's plan makes no sense. Artemis Junior's plan makes no sense. The fairy authorities response to the situation is incoherent. The whole film is nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing, with lots of empty spectacle and characters making bold claims about their capabilities that are never upheld by the actual on-screen events.
Some of the issues with the film clearly stem from the fact that it is expending a lot its limited run time (it's only 95 minutes) on establishing the world of magical creatures, the existence of a nefarious mastermind, and all sorts of other "We Want This To Start A Franchise" cruft. I certainly understand their hope of turning this into a series - there are eight books available to adapt, after all, and that Harry Potter series did quite well with similar themes - but as is often the case in "let's start a franchise" films, this comes at the expense of actually making a good movie. Surprise surprise, bad films very rarely launch franchises.
And make no mistake: this is a bad film. It's muddled and awkward and feels almost like it has been cobbled together from three different versions of what the film might have been.
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