The difference between Arthur and the Invisibles and its more sophisticated cousins is that, rather than desperately trying to please its fickle audience and teach them a lesson at the same time, it leaves the distinct impression that it's out to have fun. This is no committee-engineered product designed to boost first-quarter profits; Besson actually wants to be here. (His voice cast, which includes De Niro, Keitel, Chazz Palminteri, Emilio Estevez, Snoop Dogg and Anthony Anderson, clearly doesn't mind joining him.)
The film begins with a live-action sequence: Arthur (Highmore) and his grandmother (Farrow) are about to lose their farm unless Arthur can find the rubies his absent, explorer grandfather hid in the yard. So Arthur visits the land of the tiny yard-dwelling Minimoys, shrinking and becoming a spiky-haired CGI creature, to enlist their help. But first he must join Princess Selenia (voiced by Madonna) and her baby brother Betameche (Jimmy Fallon) in defeating resident bad guy Maltazard (voiced, in a very cool performance, by Bowie), who plans to flood the Minimoy nation using technology that Arthur has unwittingly provided.
That technology involves drinking straws, which echoes the kind of low-rent ingenuity at work here. If Arthur and the Invisibles had been all live-action, it could be compared with kooky, scrappy and slightly off-key films like The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, Time Bandits or Labyrinth. These films don't have the perfect polish of Disney and other high-profile family entertainments, but there's something refreshing about coloring out of the lines.