Many films nowadays strive to encompass the fantastic breadth that was Lord of the Rings, some nearly came close and some shamefully fails. One perfect example is this one, and it's named Eragon. No, it's not a name of a dragon, and yes it involves a dragon in it. Funny how things work in this film adapted from Christopher Paolini's youthfully-written first part of his Inheritance trilogy, just like the way how he named the heroic "chosen one" boy Eragon, a wordplay from Dragon without the E. Nonetheless, this is fantasy without any E, which stands for Epic.

I feel sorry for Christopher Paolini who had written Eragon when he was 15 years old and came to the publishing world three years later. With such a young age, he must have been a young boy himself following his dream of becoming a writer and no doubt, wanting to establish his name beside fantasy giants with the likes of Tolkien, Rowling, Lewis and LeGuin. Such an inspiration comes very hard into one's life that it compels a young mind to think and write, brewing a story half-boiled and then picking from different sources and called it his own. Without a doubt, as I have read the book Eragon and now finally watched the film, it is obvious that this world was created by a young boy whose imagination ran wild in the fantasy land and meeting in the road Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Dragonheart.

Eragon is fit for much younger audiences, the children might enjoy it for it felt like a Disney production rather than a 20th Century Fox. On the other hand, accompanying adults may find this a long torture, probably expecting this to be the new face of fantasy films. Aside from the fact that it brings nothing new to the genre, like the cheesy "chosen one" prototype films, the reluctant and almost foolish hero with a mentor sidekick, a king or dark lord who rules a kingdom for a long time and all that tosh, Eragon feels like it wanted to be Lord of the Ring's brother, and Star Wars's cousin, but expectedly falls into the bottomless pit of lava in Mordor. It tells the very conventional story of a local farm boy who discovers a great blue stone in a forest, in which its appearance was still confusing although Aria said "it chooses its rider", so fair enough, no explanations needed. He then discovers also that the blue stone is not actually a stone but a dragon egg, and when it finally hatches, thank God it's way cuter than Norbert, Hagrid's little dragon in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Too bad it came from a computer-animated creature a performance worth watching for. It was the graceful but steely eyed blue lady dragon named Saphira (rendered with the beautiful voice of Rachel Weisz) whose performance overshadowed the human counterparts of the film. She is a perfect paradigm that sometimes in films computer-generated creations can deliver more powerful performances than a human does. One failure was its casting. Newcomer Edward Speelers couldn't blamed for his lousy performance as the title hero Eragon; he lacked the gravitas that the film needs, and whether you call frowning brows or staring hard into a distance as acting, then you might have probably never saw what acting is really all about. Jeremy Irons, even with a sword and conviction of Shakespearean lines, feel incompetent as Brom. Heck, his character even felt as if Paolini ripped him off from Obi Wan Kenobi, Skywalker's mentor. Another two big mistake about casting was 1) putting John Malkovich as the meanie King Galbatorix, because he's too laughable at his character as though he had though he thought he was in a spoof film, and 2) casting pop-star Joss Stone as the blind fortune-teller was an utter mess. She feels so anachronistic in an age of dragons, when all we could think was seeing her in a music video or something. Robert Carlyle succeeds a bit in playing the evil henchman Durza, which makes me laugh because he's more a believable evil king than Malkovich as Galbatorix.

Technically speaking, Eragon satisfies with its visual effects. Its luscious landscapes and shooting sceneries served as eye-candy, but it's still haunts me because its cinematography is redolent of that of Lord of the Rings. But the rest of the aspects of the film was just - bad. The plot felt queasy, the dialogues are too cheesy, the script felt roughly written, and this is fantasy with epic hilarity proportions without any trace of depth and texture. I snorted many times while watching this film, not in thrill but in disbelief. It's just silly, laughable. I would be really amazed when a 10-year old kid would say it's a bad film because it's made for them.

Now I wonder if they're going to helm the sequel Eldest. They have ruined the first one, I wonder what doom they will bring to the second. For fact, except from the soulful dragon Saphira who spreads her wings and captured this movie as her own with the serenity of Rachel Weisz, Eragon in general never soars.


Rating: C