Eragon; Shoddy Acting in a Kid's Movie, and Lots of 'Good' Animation...My First Review

Ok, in a previous blog I mentioned that I would post later about the various aspects of hatred that I felt towards to flop that consisted of the movie ‘Eragon.’ Then I though, hang on, people aren’t really going to want me to whinge and complain about how bad this kids movie was. But if I listened to you guys all the time this blog would lose its originality and it wouldn’t be ‘Chappo’s opinion on everything’ instead it would be ‘Chappo’s opinion on everything according to what the readers want to read.’ Which is a stupid title anyway.
But I do recognize your pain and decided to turn my rant into a review, which is much more interesting and informative. So lets begin…

The movie was based on an extremely popular novel written by a 15-year-old kid named Christopher Paolini. Chris had already finished his second epic called Eldest at the time and the goons over at Hollywood finally recognized the popularity of the books and decided to rip it off in a film. Chris’s dream had originally aimed to write a book that he would want to read as his own library supposedly was lacking in sustenance. Anywho, this dream expanded quite rapidly at the though of being paid a million bucks to let others mess around with his creation. Ugh, lets just stay away from those guys as it irks me just to think of them.

Eragon essentially is a ‘kids’ book, a term which I personally hate. It is based in a world of dragons (Who play a rather major role in the story.) and monsters and dwarves and elves and all that sort of comforting fantasy drivvle. Yes, it does have magic and sorcerers and the hero is a teenager but I must admit that it was one of the best reads that I had for a long, long time. The idea, while perhaps not very original, had a great deal of freshness and vibrancy, and really incorporated the reader into an exciting world of adventure.
Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Evidently some greedy filmmaker who had probably never heard of the book until big dollar signs were presented to him by some large company thought so too. After reading the blurb on the back cover the director, Stefen Fangmeier, set out to make an epic flop and overall achieved that goal quite well. I won’t go into the details too much as it would take quite a long time to do it justice but it was frankly a disappointment to say the least.

But as bad as the actors were, as lazy and ignorant as the director was, and how ordinary the animation was, nothing compares to my worst hate. Before I reveal that piece of treasured information and wrap up my first review with a score, I would briefly like to rip into the animation a bit more. On the DvD you are treated to hours and hours of special features, nearly all are totally focused on the brilliant work of the animation team and how they solved the enigma of how a creepy man with red hair was going to disappear. While this may have been entertaining for the first half hour or so it does show you where the production values lie; they want to make a big flashy film that takes advantage of a popular, brilliant series, and produce something that will be forgotten in a matter of days after its release from cinemas. So DO NOT get the DvD, as it is not worth it unless some idiots pay you to take it away and sell on ebay, and for those that have been so unfortunate enough to have obtained a copy I really do sympathize with you.

The single worst thing about the movie was the fact that nothing was considered in relation to the novel. In the effort to make into a 90 minute clone so many essential characters were excluded and development was minimal. It was in no way prepared to follow the trilogy of the books but happy to fade away. Excuse my while I roar my pain to the world. In short, though I took rather a long time to express my rage at the expense of your precious time for which I do apologize, in short…this movie sucked. I won’t say anything more because I would just be insulting everything and anyone related to the making of the movie and that could take quite a long time.
Do yourself a favour by not watching the movie and instead having a read of the trilogy, of which the third installment is coming out very shortly…can’t wait!

Rating; 1/5 (The only reason I even gave it one star was to acknowledge that quality of the books that lead to the making of the film)