The Daily Bloon

What says, “Merry Christmas” better than a scathing movie review?
Enjoy, and happy holidays, dear readers.

Title: Eragon
Genre (Movie): Fantasy Adventure
Description: Poor peasant farmboy finds dragon egg and sets off to save kingdom from evil emperor.
Quickrating: 3/10

After reading the book Eragon by Mr. Paolini, I actually had the thought, Well, that was pretty mediocre, but it’d probably make a good movie. The plot is standard–a mish-mash of fantasy cliches, about 90% of which are directly transferred from classics like The Lord of the Rings, Dragonriders of Pern, a few out of the Watershed trilogy, and a smattering of Dragonlance books. Change the name of “urgals” to “uruk-hai” and it would read like a Tolkein novel. But there’s a good bit of action and some solid CGI wonder possibilities, so it should, quite logically, be a nice little movie.
Unfortunately, “should” does not necessarily transfer to reality nowadays, and the movie version of Eragon proves this unhappy truth.

Starting with minor gripes, there were countless consistency issues throughout the movie. Eragon’s horse apparently has some kind of morphable fur, because it’s facial markings seem to change from scene to scene. And perhaps Speleers, who plays Eragon, has this morphing fur problem too–his hair length and style flucuates every few days in the plot. Unless they have some kind of medieval Rogaine, I’d love to hear the explanation for that. There’s also a scene where the dragon rips a bag of milk on the floor, but the camera angle changes and POOF! The floor is magically dry. Things appear and disappear in actors’ hands whenever cameras switch. And, perhaps the most obvious of all, the people who crafted the display version of Saphira’s armor seemed to have absolutely no communication with the people who did Saphira’s armor in CGI, because the two don’t even look remotely close. Check the armor in this picture against the armor that the dragon wears. Was this movie even watched by anybody before being put in theaters?

The acting is almost painful to watch at times. Malkovich’s portrayal of Galbatorix made me want to giggle, not tremble in fear. Speleer’s reminds me of a blonde Ron, sans sparkly muscle shirt. The only person I felt performed admirably is Jeremy Irons as Brom, and most of that is respect for him doing decently with the terrible script he was given. Honestly, the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 5th grader.

But above all, the pacing of this movie is probably the worst I’ve ever seen in any movie ever. One would expect that, yes, sometimes in the transfer from book to movie, 50 page sections of the book need to be covered in 5 minutes. But a check of the source material confirms that it was not 50 pages, it was well over 100, and it was not “covered”, it was mugged and left by the roadside. The movie skips out on Eragon’s village love, Eragon’s naming of the dragon, most if not all filial love between Eragon and his brother, hiding out in the Spine, and Eragon’s raising of Saphira. (Literally, here’s what happens: the dragon learns to fly when about the size of a housecat, flies above the clouds, and lands on the ground about the size of house. And all of a sudden knows her name and can speak. What?) Other scenes are skipped throughout the movie, leaving plot holes big enough for a semi to fall in and consistency issues that make one’s head spin.

What saves this movie? Well, the CGI isn’t too subpar. It’s not groundbreaking, but hey, there’s fire. Gotta love fire. And I thought Durza the Shade was sufficiently creepy. Otherwise…not much else. If you have to see it, see it in theaters for the pretty colors, but I’d recommend using your $8 on belated Christmas presents instead.

For memory’s sake:

Ron Weasly: *pouts* “…pp-Piss off.” –Ron-speak for “Look! I’m a douchebag! With a sparkly muscle-shirt and long hair! Douche in the bag!” What a douchebag.