Posted: 01/18/2007

Arthur and the Invisibles

(2007)

by Sawyer J. Lahr

It is important to mention the French title of this film, which is Arthur et les Minimoys because the word minimoys (pronounced mini-mo-ē) is used in the film by the actors. Besides being mispronounced in English in the movie, the word describes a tribe of little people of which a 10-year old boy, Arthur (Freddie Highmore of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), becomes a part. Not only does he venture to save his grandparents farm house in Connecticut, he also risks his life to save the minimoys.

The setting is somewhere between the ’50s and ’70s, considering the music (including David Bowie, who is also a voice actor in the film). Other aspects of the location had to do with rural Connecticut but were much more stylized and were without a definable time period. This timelessness made the complex story more justifiable because no one aspect of the film required itself to be historically or culturally accurate.

This is clear as early as we hear the voice of Arthur who has an English accent and who says he attends a boarding school in London, U.K., when he is not living with his grandparents in Connecticut. Arthur’s parents are in the city looking for work, seeing their son irregularly.

The imagination is limitless for Arthur and his grandmother (Mia Farrow), both believing quite innocently and naively that there is a race of creatures called the minimoys.

These little people were found in Africa where Arthur’s grandfather traveled years before while on Safari. He befriended the minimoys as well as an African tribe of human-sized people who some how are a compliment to the tiny civilization of minimoys or elfish creatures who live amongst flowers, plants, and underground.

Somehow, and the story does not explain, these people both the human-sized African tribe and the minimoys were transported to Connecticut, U.S.A., by Arthur’s clever and adventurous grandfather.

The film may require its audience to extend its imagination beyond reasonable belief, as far as the information given, but the pace of the plot does not waste any time on details before it presents the major conflict. Arthur must find a great treasure of rubies, part of the mythic tale of the minimoys told to Arthur by his grandmother, in order to save his grandparents’ property from being repossessed by the bank which mortgaged it.

What’s needed to maintain ownership of the property is money, the rubies, and the signature of Arthur’s grandfather. Not knowing whether his grandfather is still alive, where he is, or when he may be coming back, Arthur begins an exciting quest at all odds, but whith extraordinary courage, to collect a treasure protected by an evil “M” (David Bowie), all in the context of real-time footage and a cartoon-animated world.

Sawyer J. Lahr is a film student at Columbia College Chicago.

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