film: Eragon

Jerman's Rating: 1 step forward, 1 step back. Really there isn't much to go off of in this film. Teenagers would be a good crowd to appreciate this film. It has a good amount of killing and stabbing, but its a different flavor keeping the film a pretty good family friendly movie. This film is first a fantasy, second a movie, and does story and characters last.

One of the basic laws in making film is: show don't tell, and if you can- imply. Eragon had some trouble with this, but gets better as time goes on, you do have a lot to get caught up on, it just wasn't done very artisticly. There isn't a whole lot of character development, really only with one or two characters, but there is a lot of closeups on the main characters faces, several death scenes (poorly done) which takes away from time that could be spent showing other things. Part of the lack of development included the bad guys. They were over-the-top typcial, a bunch of fat stupid ugly guys standing around being stupid while intimidated by the 'bad'-er guys. It kind of reminded me of the bad guys on Gummi Bears or something similar.

Lots of things are put into the film, but are horribly underdeveloped, one wonders why they were put in at all. You may not understand right now, but once you watch you will see how they kind of come out of nowhere, it just sort of is. There is a weird love interest thrown in, the angsty archer just kind of jumps into the story, joining the rebel army is kind of whimsical, there are more examples.
All in all there isn't much meat on this films bones. A lot of that is because things don't translate easily from this world to the real world (like the morality of using magic and other magical bonds and stuff). You can pick at the bones and find some meat. The little bits I found talk about your life going in a direction or getting a 'calling' that you don't want or didn't ask for. Rising up to the 'calling' (cause you'll die if you don't). This is really only referenced well in one scene and even that doesn't get justice. There is a little bit of duty and honor, and courage, and friendship thrown in there, but are still really underdeveloped like I mentioned before.

I need to be a little bit less nagative before I end this review. The story wasn't all bad, the details were really good, the visual effects amazing (which I am always a fan of). The overarching story and history might be lacking, but there are some great moments, great characters (not a whole lot, but I'm a big fan of some of them), even though there isn't a whole lot of morals thrown in there, it is quite entertaining as long as you aren't too offended by the poor book to movie transition.