Arthur et les Minimoys 2006

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: It's a pretty good picture, albeit a strange one. Read more

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times: Luc Besson serves up a hybrid of live actors and computer-generated figures to tell a not-endearing-enough story about a boy who shrinks to microscopic size to find his missing grandfather. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Luc Besson has never been one of my favorite filmmakers, but he seems to have found his metier in children's fantasy, and this semianimated adventure is enjoyable and imaginative despite its formulaic qualities. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: Besson is a pro when it comes to action movies, but this part live, part animation effort is a mess, highlighted by creepy animation, derivative plot points and a child star who speaks way too fast. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: [Arthur and the Invisibles is] a film for kids who want to know what headaches feel like. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: There's no time to sort out the players or the story as things rush ahead at an overwrought pace. Huge amounts of backstory are just plopped down in front of us, so fast and furiously that it makes little sense. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The movie bing-bing-bings all over the place, repurposing fantasy novels, video games, Arthurian legends. Besson's grocery bill for all I know. Even the musical score has multiple-personality disorder. Read more

Alex Chun, Los Angeles Times: Director Luc Besson admits he knew nothing about animation before he started this project, and it shows. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: An odd imp of a movie, Arthur and the Invisibles may actually be filled with a bit too much invention for the average kid. Read more

Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly: Luc Besson has made a fair share of artfully bad movies. Arthur and the Invisibles -- half-live-action, half-CG kid's adventure -- is (by a hair) more bad-bad, like The Fifth Element, than good-bad, like The Big Blue. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: Too eccentric for kids, too silly for everyone else, it floats in a Neverland of breathtaking visuals in service of a story that pilfers everything (and I mean everything) from the Arthur legends to last summer's The Ant Bully. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Arthur and the Invisibles may be a tale for children, but it's got the bad habits of a profligate adult -- the thing borrows shamelessly from its betters and then pretends to be self-sustaining. Read more

Jean Oppenheimer, L.A. Weekly: [Actor Freddie] Highmore is sweetly exuberant, but the voice talent is uneven, and the only really clever bits find the CGI characters navigating real live foliage. Read more

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: Directed by Luc Besson, this inventive family movie sets up the most delightful premise, then squanders it on the kind of yawn-inducing CG adventure you might expect from one of those long, plot-heavy cut scenes that slow down video games. Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: A mishmash with a distinctive but disorderly animation palette whose top-notch voice cast -- including Robert De Niro, Madonna and David Bowie -- gets lost in the muck. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Arthur and the Invisibles makes an excellent case against casting animated movies with celebrity voices. There are people who make their living as voiceover artists, and they would have been infinitely better than the lackluster Robert De Niro. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Good intentions, a full complement of parts, and proper assembly do not guarantee a successful result. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: This kids' cartoon from France is such a surreally demented attempt to connect with children that it's the equivalent of foie gras breakfast cereal or a bleu cheese milkshake. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: There's a reason American animated filmmakers don't use the great Robert De Niro, Jason Bateman and Madonna to voice their cartoons. These big names add nothing to this frustrating goulash of fairy tales and fantasy-film ingredients. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Luc Besson, the most-Hollywoodish of Gallic directors, has adapted his own series of popular (in France) kid-lit tomes to produce a glossy, expensive ($84 million) and long-winded mix of live action and computer animation. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times: There are too many things out of whack here, and too many unanswered questions. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: While technically polished and adequately executed Arthur, like most of Besson's movies, is a strangely soulless experience. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: Luc Besson's half-baked live-action/animated fantasy looks like it was invented on the hoof: it's erratically plotted, poorly animated, overly derivative and too insufferably cute to interest anyone above undemanding toddler age. Read more

Stephen Garrett, Time Out: A lazy fairy-tale pastiche reveling in mite-size cherubs, which cribs from gnomic mythology, elvish lore, Harry Potter, Arthurian legend and can't-pay-the-rent melodrama. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: The bucolic wonder buried in Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invisibles has been snuffed out by this alienating and dislikable animated film. As overproduced and acrid as The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and The Fifth Element. Read more

Jean Oppenheimer, Village Voice: Predictable and overly busy, this sci-fi adventure should nonetheless appeal to game-savvy tots, especially those familiar with the source material. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: This children's epic is slowed considerably by a convoluted, multi-tiered plotline in which we bounce between the human world and the Minimoy one. None of the characters are compelling, despite the star-studded vocal cast behind them. Read more