He pretty much mirrors the sentiment of previous reviews, although he offers a few more details about what he thinks is wrong with the film.
AICN-Gang
You know the intro ( "Long time reader..") but in my case it's more valid because we don't get too many exclusive screenings down here in South America. Anyway, one day an egg felt on my lap and I ended up with a pass for Eragon.
I know you already have two negatives reviews (one of them with a boy's tears attached) and mine won't be different, but I thought I could bring some more light about what when wrong with Eragon.
Let's start by saying that I loved LOTR, liked Narnia and never read the Christopher Paolini's novel this is based on. So, my take would be the one from a movie buff, film director wannabe and Eragon uninitiated.
Right from the beginning you know this is going to be bad. An unnecesary voice over, some lame one-liners, bad acting and worse directing. The bigger plot-point in Eragon seems to be how amateurish is our hero, but actually all the movie has this problem.
See, you can tell right away this is the work of amateur people. You get half-baked ideas from a seventeen-years-old writer transformed in an even lamer script by the people who gave the words to Superman IV, Planet Of The Apes (The bad one) and Jurassic Park III (I know, they are not amateur anymore, but come on!). Then, it's transformed by a visual effect supervisor in his first movie using a new actor as his star.
So, these guys tell us about Alagaesia, a land where a long lost of army of dragon riders got greedy and in a Reservoir Dogs Mexican standoff style ended running dragonless to the mountains to escape the power of Galvatorix(John Malkovich in his own Lame-Evil mode), one of them who became the ruler.
So, their only hope is one dragon's egg and dragon rider who can become their leadership, face Galvatorix and save the world. Enter Eragon, Ed Speelers (In Luke Skywalker-Spoof mode), a farmer who lives with his uncle and have a missing parent.
I don't know exactly why they have so much problem to find this guy, because I have not idea why they choose him. All I got was an obnoxius hero, that doesn't have a real motivation to become the leader of the resistance nor have the charisma to pull it off.
Eragon ended up with an egg, a dragon egg, that later in the movie (and in just one afternoon, just like those "add water" thugs that Marvin the Martian has), becomes Saphira.
Here comes a new issue. Look, I don't have problems with female dragons, but when you have an obnoxius hero and Brom, a tired master (Jeremy Irons in his tired-of-bad-scripts mode), the only thing you don't need is a sexy voice (Rachel Weisz) coming from you dragon. Come On! I want a warrior dragon with a commanding voice like... Ehh... Sean Connery? Not a sexy one!!
So, Eragon, Saphira and Brom starts their mission to find the remaining dragon riders, face Galvatorix and save Alagaesia. The rest is just too boring and spoilerish to tell.
Anyway, unless you are a pervert (or a Rachel Weisz fan as I am), you can ignore the dragon issue. But, then you have how badly established are the obstacles. The beauty about LOTR is that you fear for your heroes. I mean, can really a hobbit travel all around the middle earth with a powerful ring and faces evil? 1100 pages, 12 hours and 4 years later we do know he can.
But page by page, minute by minute, we knew they were facing a huge task, powerful and merciless armies, heart-wrenching landscapes and a powerful enemy, so we fear for them.
In Eragon all we see is a young and impetious dragon rider wannabe who discover and uses magic to face every other obstacle and in every case he do it as easily as Indiana Jones shooting that sable-wielding guy we all remember. You can never feel fear for them because you never reach a sense of huge task or larger-than-life obstacles that all epic requires.
Besides that, we also get a jet-propulsed dragon (It never uses his wings, like any other flying animal would do), a non-existent huge battle we never see, a couple of lame "I like you" stares from Eragon and Arya and a sense of "I miss the aerial dragon battle from Dungeons & Dragons" that will haunt you forever.
And a Avril Lavigne as a end title theme! What's up with that?!?!?!?!??!
On the other hand, Robert Carlyle does an incredible transformation for Durza and Jeremy Irons makes us wish once again he had a better script that takes full advantage of his talent. But as you could read, there is anything else to see here...
So, sadly I know comparisons are unfair, but if Lord Of The Ring is what it is, and Narnia is the LOTR for kids, maybe Eragon could be the B-movie LOTR/Star Wars spoof we didn't need.
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