Dir.
Stefen Fangmeier, US, 2006, 104 mins
Cast: Ed Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, Robert
Carlyle
Review by Will Davis
After the success of Lord of the
Rings films it has been oddly quiet on the fantasy film front,
bar the yearly assault of the Harry Potter franchise. Now
there is Eragon, based on the book by Christopher Paolini,
returning audiences once again to those dubious enchanted
realms inhabited by elves, wizards, warlords and dragons.
Naturally the story involves lots
of gobbledy-gook wordings, hocus-pocus set-ups and definitive
battles with evil beings: The land of Alagaesia is ruled
over by the evil John Malkovich (or Galbatorix if you will),
who disposed of the famous dragon riders of times of yore
in order to take control. Eragon is not just an insanely
inspired spin on the word dragon – it
also happens to be the name of the protagonist (Speleers),
a seventeen-year-old farm boy (adopted – of course)
who finds a big blue egg and hatches his very own telepathic
blue dragon called Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz). When
jaded local Brom (Irons) discovers that Eragon may be a dragon
rider, he realises the fate of the kingdom lies in the boy’s
hands and together they embark on a quest to find the Varden,
a group of rebels who have long opposed Malkovich’s
control.
The bad news for fantasy fans is that
Eragon is a rare breed of turkey, leaking nonsense like
stuffing from its over-inflated belly of a concept just
in time for Christmas. The fact that it is more of a kids’ film
than one for adult consumption in no way excuses some of
the horrible scenarios to which the viewer is subjected.
Cardboard cut-outs would have more charisma than these
characters, and while the plot may sound convoluted, those
long words actually merely disguise the fact that it is
pantomime simple, making any of the ponderous dialogue-driven
scenes intended to advance the storyline feel excruciatingly
slow.
The major problem with Eragon however, is Eragon. Having
a strapping blond, blue-eyed lad without a bad bone in his
body for a hero in an era where even Superman has been reincarnated
as a self-doubting single father seems something of a step
backwards. It is not helped by the fact that the character
is played by a man-sized block of wood, the likes of which
even a computer generated dragon seems incapable of upstaging.
In their scenes together Jeremy Irons tries gamely to outdo
Speleers in the bad-acting stakes, but nothing can compete
with this force of nature. The nearest we get to depth comes
from a very pertinent and not a bit superfluous scene towards
the end of the film in which our young hero is interrupted
while he changes, showing him naked to the waist and in moulded-on
black leather trousers.
As a piece of escapism Eragon serves
its function more than adequately – at every other turn (and I won’t
say twist because there aren’t any) of the story our
hero has to be reminded by some other hapless character that
he is special; a plot device that only viewers able to project
themselves into his shoes will be able to partake in. However,
any kids who do identify with this saccharine conglomerate
I should be seriously worried about.
On a side note, perhaps the most interesting
aspect of Eragon is that when the Varden are finally reached
they are revealed to have a black leader – one doesn’t
know whether to welcome his arrival as a harbinger of refreshing
multiculturalism in the world of fantasy (especially after
the Lord of the Rings trilogy in which the only dark-skinned
characters seemed to be orcs) or to mourn his purely tokenistic
role.
Director Fangmeier has produced a hideously plain, plodding
and uninspired film, something that seems almost unforgivable
given that the point of the fantasy genre is that it is able
to go beyond the limitations of what is possible.
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