Book Review - Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)

A while ago I was struck by a thought: I read the Artemis Fowl books compulsively when they were first published, yet today I can barely recall anything from them. I remember reading them while being dragged around on holiday by my parents. When I was around 11 I was on something of an Eoin Colfer kick and devoured just about everything of his I can lay my hands on: the Benny books, The Wish List, The Supernaturalist and the Artemis Fowl series.

I read his books because at the time, Colfer was one of those authors who seemed to be everywhere. I felt something of an obligation to read his work, even though I admit I can't remember enjoying much of anything he wrote (hence my failure to remember anything from them). Now in late adulthood, I thought it was time for a reappraisal of Colfer, and have begun with the first in his “cyber-fantasy” series, Artemis Fowl.

The simple-yet-absurd plot runs like this: a 12-year-old aspiring supervillain plans to kidnap a fairy so he can extort a fortune in gold from its comrades, which he means to use to rebuild his family's criminal empire. To Artemis Fowl's ill-fortune, the fairy he captures is Captain Holly Short, an officer of an elite police squad, which prompts the rest of her division to respond with extreme prejudice.

Artemis Fowl works largely because of its balance in tone. As said above, our protagonist's masterplan sounds like the sort of absurd scheme a child would come up with (though I'm sure plenty of adults have concocted far worse), yet is carried through with unwavering efficiency by Artemis and his allies. Artemis himself is something of a Stewie Griffin-type. He has the brains and audacity to potentially be a master criminal, but is tempered by a childlike sensibility. For instance, his scheme kicks off when he puts out an online advertisement which effectively says: Irish billionaire will pay lots of money to meet a fairy. This is the type of joke I only got as an adult – Colfer I've found is really good at this sort of adults-only stuff – but for Artemis it never crosses his mind that such an ad could be misinterpreted.

Artemis is also given some depth in his interactions with his henchman, Butler, and his demented mother. It's unsurprising that Artemis's only real friend would be his bodyguard, which gives the concept (a small boy giving orders to an immense, trained killer) a touch of poignancy. His relationship with his mother is even worse. YA books often have one or both parents missing, most often dead. In this case, Artemis' father has vanished and his mother is deeply traumatised by it, even haranguing her own son when she doesn't recognise who he is. It's a nasty bite to give to what is otherwise a punchy action-comedy. Thankfully Colfer doesn't wallow in it enough to make it melodramatic, but gives it enough attention to make Artemis more depth.

Of course, the fairy side of things is where Colfer really starts to go crazy with the concept. Our focus here is the Recon division of the Lower Elements Police – ie, LEP Recon. They live underground and travel in magma-driven capsules. The elves try to keep peace between warring goblins and dwarves. Occasionally they're forced above ground to deal with any escapees that may blow their cover, in one case a marauding troll.

Holly Short and Commander Julius Root give our insights into this world and how it functions. These are both likeable, engaging characters, though a bit too cliché. Holly is the young rookie eager to prove herself (first female Recon officer as well, in case it wasn't obvious enough), while Root is the short-tempered, cigar-chomping boss who always gives his team a hard time (but has a heart beneath it all). Nothing particularly wrong with any of this, but it's something we've all seen before in some variation.

One character who I remember enjoying even as a child (and still did this time) was Mulch Diggums, the kleptomanic dwarf who's roped into burglarising Fowl Manor. Mulch is the one character whose motives are not directly connected to anyone else's. He doesn't seem to care about stopping a war or about helping Artemis' plan. He only wants his freedom and helps anyone he can as long as it gets him that. He's like a far, far less annoying Jack Sparrow. His interactions with Root and Foaly are really funny (again, it's the sort of disgruntled dynamic adults would easier relate to) and his brief encounters with Butler are a highlight of the book. I only wish we'd had more of a confrontation between Mulch and Butler, though Colfer promises more in later books.

With Mulch we also come to the part that might divide people over the books and their appeal to adults, namely the scat humour. While a dwarf explosively defecating on someone's head sounds like something you'd find in a Seltzerberg movie (I'm sure it exists but I don't hate myself enough to check), I think Colfer saves it with his dry tone. As I said before, the book's balancing of ridiculousness and seriousness is one of its strongest points. The clipped narrative (by a fairy psychologist) makes a nice contrast with the crudity of the subject matter. I was anxious that Mulch's combustible bowels would turn me off the rest of the story, but it wasn't half as cringeworthy as I thought it would be.

I also found Holly's and Artemis' interactions all-too-brief, but fascinating all the same. The mutual disdain-cum-fascination teases a lot for their future encounters. Holly granting Artemis his wish at the end adds a further wrinkle, and I look forward to rediscovering how that develops.

Indeed, I look forward to seeing how all of this develops. Artemis Fowl proves a fun ride after all. I only wonder what I was missing out on as a youngster.

Film Review - Shaun of the Dead (2004)

If anyone's reading this (I know someone does because I check stats because I'm insecure), you might be surprised that it's taken me this long to post another review. This is partly due to laziness on my part, and partly to do with the general chaos and uncertainty of early adulthood. Enjoy your freedom while you have it, kids.

Today though I'm struggling to return to some sort of format by reviewing the 2004 comedy horror icon, Shaun of the Dead.

The movie centres on 29-year-old loser Shaun (Simon Pegg), stuck in a dead-end job, a failing relationship and living with his burnout friend Ed (Nick Frost). After a disastrous break-up with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), Shaun pledges to turn his life around. It's around this point that zombies begin to stalk the streets of London, massacring and feasting on anyone they catch. Shaun seizes the opportunity to prove himself by shepherding Liz and his mother to his local pub, the Winchester.

Shaun of the Dead is one of those movies that experts on British TV would call star-studded. The starring duo of Pegg and Frost, along with director Edgar Wright, all cut their teeth with the cult show Spaced, fans of which will enjoy the spiritual connection. Shaun may as well be Tim Bisley a few years down the line, where his dreams of comic book stardom have crashed and his life has lost all meaning. Nick Frost's Ed is an even more extreme example of loserdom, though Ed at least has accepted his lot in life, to the point where he fails to notice the impact his slothfulness has on other people.

The actors' real-life friendship adds a lot to the central dynamic, particularly when Ed tries to console Shaun after his break-up, and also when the two try to make a plan to survive the zombie apocalypse. Pegg is a charming enough actor to make you root for Shaun despite his major flaws, such as taking his girlfriend for granted. Ed, as a character, is a lot more obnoxious and is there more to lighten the film's darker moments. There are points where I felt (especially towards the end) where I feel Ed was a bit too over-the-top and I found part of myself wishing the zombies would just eat him already.

Kate Ashfield gives a decent performance, though she's relegated to playing the “straight man” to a host of more over-the-top characters. Black Books' Dylan Moran shines as her creepy wannabe-boyfriend, David, while also making for an interesting comparison with Shaun. David has a more successful career as a lecturer, and a girlfriend of his own, but his pining after Liz makes him seem somehow more pathetic – especially as he spends more of the film complaining then trying to be proactive. Lucy Davis also stands out despite a fairly small role as Di, Liz's friend and David's girlfriend. Like Ed, her character serves mostly for comic relief. However, this makes her dramatic shift towards the end of the film all the more impressive.

The film also has two British veterans as Shaun's mother Barbara (Penepole Wilton) and step-dad Philip (Bill Nighy). Wilton does a decent job but I feel like the film could have done more to establish a relationship between her and Shaun. In fact, I felt that Barbara's strangely muted reactions to the zombies was going to be a plot point – as in, perhaps the reason Shaun had been distant towards her was because she was going senile or something? Nighy is another performer who does a lot with a small role. His is another relationship with Shaun that really could have been expanded more, given all the potential it has. Shaun weeping as Philip dies is a great scene, but I feel it should have happened later in the film to add more weight. Then again, the film's final act is quite brutal for a comedy film, so perhaps Wright and Pegg wanted to space the deaths out a bit.

This brings me on to the next point. The first two acts of the film are a comedy with a few touches of horror here and there. The focus is less on the zombies and more on Shaun and Ed's confused reactions to them. The duo treat the epidemic more like an inconvenience than a threat to the human race. The climax of the film reverses this balance, turning into a bloody horror-thriller with only a few jokes here and there. When I first saw Shaun of the Dead (about ten years ago), I found the tonal shift off-putting and the gore and trauma to be incongruous next to the irreverence of the film's opening. This time around, I didn't find it quite so jarring, though I still feel Hot Fuzz did a better job maintaining a consistent tone. This is probably one of those cases where the first film is a learning process upon which later films build, though that's not factoring in The World's End (which I haven't seen since it's release and would need to revisit).

As for the overall theme of growing up, what I found interesting about the film is that . . . it doesn't really tackle it. A conventional movie would reduce the zombie epidemic to an allegory for the tribulations of life, with Shaun rising to the challenge and proving himself a hero – and also that he's ready to grow up.

Instead, the movie's treatment of this theme is more cynical. Look at the sequence where Shaun forms and then rapidly adjusts his survival plan: “Take car. Go to Mum's. Kill Phil. Grab Liz. Go to the Winchester. Have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over.” This is, I feel, one of the film's funniest moments. It also demonstrates Wright's manic editing style, which is well-suited to Shaun's short-hand.

The sequence shows Shaun's refusal to take the crisis serious, using it as an excuse to have another pint. One would expect Shaun to grow and become more noble as the film progresses, and he certainly tries, growing more empathetic to the plight of those around him. However, by the film's end, with the crisis averted, Shaun is back to where he was at the start, only now he's lounging on the couch with Liz instead of Ed. Liz, by contrast, goes from wanting to try new and exciting things (and dumping Shaun for lacking her enthusiasm), to happily settling for a life of ease.

The film starts off poking fun at the “zombifying” effect the rat race has on people, and yet by its end society hasn't really progressed. In World War Z (the book, not the movie), the epidemic has a profound psychological impact on the survivors, who radically reassess their lives in the face of the horror they've witnessed. In Shaun of the Dead, the survivors incorporate the epidemic into the tedium of before, with zombies showing up in talk shows and reality TV. Despite its unconventional style and heavy use of humour, Shaun of the Dead stays true to the Romero-interpretation of zombie-dom – that zombies are an allegory for the drudgery and inescapability of modern day life.

Is it worth seeing though?

Yeah boyyyyyyyy!