Eragon ... Movie Review

"Eragon" is based on a novel by Christopher Paolini. The story's about this young farmer boy by the name of Eragon. Grew up with his uncle, lost both his parents somehow. Found some special powers, uncle dies. Swears revenge... Old mysterious man becomes his mentor. Saves a beautiful girl. Fights an incredible evil king who has a mysterious magic wielding henchman.

Do I have to Force the imagery further?

You want to try harder? There is no try... only do or do not...

Ok ok... you get the point already.

Good? OK lar...
Worth
S$6.00 (mostly for the visual effects)
Movies in Singapore are from a range of S$6.50 to S$9.00 depending on the day and time you watch it on.

There have been many comparisons made between Eragon and Star Wars (for the plot), Lord Of the Rings (for the fantasy world) and even Harry Potter (for the popularity)... I don't know if I am affected by all these reviews... I probably am. I could not help sniggering when I saw a scene of Eragon in the setting sun sitting by a field, orchestra music playing in the background.

Still... Keeping my mind open, I thought that the movie lacked depth. Running less than 2 hours, the movie tried to do too many things in too little time, sometimes making ridiculous shortcuts just to smoothen the plot. There was not enough time to develop the wide array of characters in the plot, Eragon (Ed Speeler), his mentor, Brom(Jeremy Irons), his dragon Saphira (Rachel Weisz), his future love interest (Sienna Guillory), two antagonists King Galbatorix(John Malkovich) and Durza (Robert Carlyle) and additional characters like Murtagh etc...

Though the cast included some great actors, they were not really allowed to shine... with some corny lines, especially from John Malkovich,

"As long as I am King... Disloyalty will be punishable... by

DEATH..."

and lousy plots, for example, Murtagh was imprisoned for being suspicious one moment, and 15 minutes of running movie time later, he gets accepted as a comrade??? Its these kinds of shortcuts that were a little hard to swallow.

For the recent Harry Potter movies, I was able to appreciate the movie a little better even though it felt like there was a lot crammed in as well. That was because I read the Harry Potter books, so I was able to take the movie as a short visual tour of what I got from the book. It probably felt empty for someone who hadn't read the book too.

Regardless, as a movie, I felt that the directors and script writers could have done better to keep the pace going while giving a reasonable amount of coverage for the wide array of characters. I think Peter Jackson and his team did a fairly good job with LOTR. Thus I was quite amused to read an interview of the director Stefen Fangmeier, where he commented that he felt frustrated that the last episode of the LOTR trilogy took too long to end. Well... I think with his visual effects expertise, he would go far if he just learnt a little from Peter's story telling.

So the saving point? The wonderful visual effects. Of course, the director is the expert. (He comes with experience from ILM with a string of movies under his belt as the visual effects sups). Saphira the dragon was wonderfully rendered. The interplay between life action and effects had been merged so seamlessly I did not stop to wonder how they did it.

But why did they have to waste Rachel Weisz as only a voice actress!??