Eragon-Come All Ye Brain Damaged 15 Year Olds!
Are you a fifteen year old whose brain has been damaged from playing with too many lead laced toys? If you answered yes then do I have the “movie” for you. I will not mix any words; this is one of the worst films of its kind I have ever seen, period. How bad is this flick? I had Eragon recorded on my dvr and tried to watch it without fast forwarding. Had I been in the theater, I would have left and opted not to review this film. Seriously, I would have faked being ill. I know admitting this is the ultimate “no-no” but seriously, you don’t have to watch every second of this film to see it move from cliché to cliché. Trust me.
Eragon is so infantile, so moronic, so poorly thought through and constructed that it seems as though it was written by a mentally under developed child. Let’s just say the following conversation played through my mind. “Oh, what’s that? You mean Eragon WAS written by a child? Well, I guess that explains it. He was how old when he wrote it? Fifteen? No you say!” Yep, fifteen and work began on a feature film not long after.
Imagine taking the average teenage dork that is obsessed with say, dragons and dungeons and the Lord of the Rings, (I loved all three Lord of the Rings by the way), and have that teenager crank out a fantasy script. Go ahead imagine what that script would be like, go on. Well, that is what you have with this pile of crap. Fifteen-year-old boy destined to save a repressed kingdom, magical dragon egg “finds” him, and he has magical powers and, oh big surprise coming, spoiler, he saves the day with his pet dragon. No seriously. Saying that Eragon likes to borrow is a vast understatement. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, all sorts of mythology were all scavenged to piece the heavily, almost comically clichéd and predictable script together in a sort of Frankensteinian clusterf***. It really is a work of art how incredibly bad Eragon happens to be. If this was some b-movie with a tiny budget, sure, whatever, but a big-budget film full of stars, we deserve better.
The visual effects and sets cloak the true extent of Eragons “turdness.” At times both the visual effects and sets, seem rushed but for the most part they hold up well. This is the saving grace of Eragon, as trust me, if you are over 18 or have seen a decent number of other blockbuster flicks you will spot most of what this derivative mess has to offer coming a mile away.
How did this story get fast tracked so quickly? If that isn’t a good question, but that’s Hollywood for you, isn’t it? The bottom line is that people were snowed into seeing this film and its approximately $100 million dollar budget saw about three times as much come back in, so god help us all, there may be more of this childish garbage coming your way.
Here is the deal, I wasn’t in a bad mood when I sat down to watch the film. I tried to dismiss the interview with writer Christopher Paolini I saw on CNN, where he smugly went on and on about the film while perched on his parents tiny Montana "ranch" that appeared to be about the size of Rhode Island. I tried to give Eragon a chance. I tried to ignore everything that was wrong with this film. I even looked around to see what other reviewers had said of the film, the other reviews, while often more spineless were, mostly vicious. Others have said far, far worse than I say here. If you like your brain, just avoid this film, it may only make you angry to see good money spent so foolishly. But that is the day and age, is it not?
Story D- (Seriously, so derivative it may make your eyes bleed.)
Acting C- (Yes, the acting. What the hell is John Malkovich doing in this? He plays the main bad guy in what is probably the worst performance of his career. No longer can people point to Making Mr. Right as a movie he wishes no one had seen. No, Eragon has that beat by a few million miles. Malkovich reads his lines as if doing a parody of how he thinks a bad actor would act. It is THAT bad. Edward Speleers is fine as Eragon, I mean no one could done much better with this script. Robert Carlyle, a solid actor for sure, was saddled with some of the worst lines ever uttered in a major Hollywood release and his scenes with Speleers might make you laugh out loud. Must have been paycheck time for Carlyle and Malkovich. These actors should have never taken the job. Plain and simple.)
Visuals B (The visuals are inconsistent but from time to time really hit the mark and keep the audience from outright murdering themselves.)
Originality/Innovation F (Eragon is in one word, regressive. Eragon may have set human evolution back.)
Enjoyability Grade F (Even if you love these kind of movies, Eragon is such clichéd garbage that it literally mocks other films of its genre.)
Home Theater/HD Factor B
Overall Grade D- (Why a D- and not a big old F? Too many hard working people put in the hours to create the solid visual effects. Eragon is a con job, just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a con job, only Eragon wasted a vastly larger sum of cash. In some ways this is the most offensive blockbuster ever. So Hollywood, don’t even try to tell me that this was the best blockbuster script that was sitting around. For that would be impossible.)
|
