Eragon (**1/2)

? Teen author Christopher Paolini’s flying-dragon fantasy comes to the screen, with newcomer Edward Speleers in the title role of a farm hand who becomes the reluctant savior of an oppressed people.

+ What you want from a movie like this is to be transported to an unfamiliar place with different rules and customs, and in its best moments the movie succeeds, especially visually. Director Stefan Fangmeier was a visual effects man, and the dragon Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz) looks completely believable. Jeremy Irons makes the most of a supporting role as the mentor to the young Eragon.

- I just saw this five days ago and already it’s kind of receding in my memory. At least as presented here, the evil-tyrant plot is overfamiliar, and the movie in some ways comes off as a tired amalgamation of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The idea of a society maintained by the wise cooperation of intelligent dragons and humans is novel, but the minor characters are colorless or, in the case of the seer played by Joss Stone, superfluous. I had no trouble accepting the notion of a mind-reading dragon, but the use of “visions” to move the story forward seemed lame to me. And the final battle scene is anticlimactic.

= **1/2 The scarcity of this sort of fantasy movie should make it worthwhile for admirers of the genre, but I found my attention wandering at times.

IMDb link

viewed 12/16/06 at Moorestown and reviewed 12/22/06