Review

Review Date: 17-December-06
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Eragon (2006)

I want to state up front that I have nothing against teenagers. Not only are they the future of our nation, they're useful today for sponsoring cheap car washes and blending tasty Orange Juliuses (Julii?). Heck, I was even a teenager once and happy to be so in opposition to popular sentiment. The thing is, now that I'm a mature, world-famous critic I don't want movies to make me feel like I should be a teenager. And "Eragon" does just that.

Most people have heard about the remarkable origins of this tale, which was written by Christopher Paolini when he was 15 or thereabouts and later became a literary phenomenon. Adapted for the screen as the intended bud of a lucrative trilogy, "Eragon" has all the earmarks of a fantasy classic. Every. Single. One. You've got your attractive, headstrong, big-hearted farm boy who lends his name to the title (played by Ed Speelers, the Hayley Mills of the next generation). You've got his call to destiny in the form of a dragon's egg and ensuing tragedy in the loss of a home. You've got your counsel from an older man full of lore (Jeremy Irons) and unceasing persecution by an evil king (John Malkovich) through a bloodthirsty sorcerer (Robert Carlyle). You've got your battalion of plucky rebels waiting for their day in the sun. And, of course, you've got your princess in distress (Sienna Guillory), for whom Eragon drops everything in the full rashness of youth and Skywalker tradition.

Great myths and legends survive because they tap into universal themes and archetypes, so it wasn't wrong for Paolini to borrow so liberally from "Star Wars" and other sources. What troubles me is that the filmmakers give a viewer the feeling that she's watching a picture made by teens for teens. Almost everything about "Eragon" smacks of inexperience: the facile sentiment, lack of humor, dull action scenes, and choppy editing which suggests the assumption that no one in our ADHD world cares about continuity anyway. Newcomer Speelers comports himself well but is allowed to project a beauty more physical than inner. The one thing that might have elevated "Eragon" and set it apart (in conjunction with terrific scenery and costumes) is the relationship between the hero and his dragon (decently computer-generated and seductively voiced by Rachel Weisz). The deal is that she picked him out of generations of men (and women?) to be her Rider, and their lives become so intertwined that they can read each other's thoughts and his death would instantly cause her own. That's some pretty heavy stuff, and way better than any ol' boy/girl romance. Alas, it's not mined for its potential by this movie, which settles for inoffensive mediocrity. It puts me in mind of a high school student who, when faced with writing a term paper on a fascinating subject, merely copies paragraphs from the Web instead of producing something smart and original.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.