I loved the first two books in Luc Besson's 'Arthur and the Minimoys' series, and I felt the American version of the movie was fine, if lacking in some crucial scenes. Sadly, the last two books in the series have never been released in the U.S., so I never actually got to find out what happened in them. However, I bought the DVD just to see if they were any good in film form. Sadly, the second film does not hold up. While the first film was far from flawless, it did feel like a self-contained story. Here, however, you can tell that events have just been strung along with little consequence just to fill time and make room for the third movie. For example, it's established that after Maltazard fled at the end of the first movie, someone else took his thrown, isolated his kingdom, and sent their own soldiers out to get in Arthur's way. Who is this person? What are his goals? I have no idea. We never find out in either of the sequels. The only reason this is brought up is so that random henchmen can chase Arthur for a little while. Not to mention that Arthur's search for Selenia and the bearer of the message gets tiresome quickly. It's all basically filler until the end when Maltazard FINALLY shows up (with a completely new voice who sounds nothing like David Bowie, I might add), to reveal that he plans to trap Arthur in the Minimoy world while he becomes human size. One thing I can't help but find ridiculous is the fact that while the shrinking/growing process on human characters changes them back and forth between Minimoy and human, if it's a Minimoy character, they still look the same when they get bigger. So really, all they did was take the threat from the first movie, and apply it to the regular world. It still doesn't change very much. This movie just felt unnecessary, and if you skip to the third, you won't miss much.
