| Overall Grade: |
D+ |
|
| Story: |
D |
|
|
| Acting: |
B- |
|
|
| Direction: |
D |
|
|
| Visuals: |
B- |
|
|
From the would-be ideal audience member
by Tony (movies profile)
Feb 9, 2008
27
of
28 people found this review helpful
Let me preface this review by saying that I was excited about this movie from the first preview I saw of it.
Admittedly, I enjoy films like this, with heroic (over)acting, cheesy fantasy dialogue, stunning visual effects, epic fight scenes, and a storyline that hinges around the idea that there's a menacing evil and a flawless epic hero who saves the day.
Sitting in the comfortable reclining seats of the theatre on opening day I was excited to see it. This movie was supposed to have everything I loved to see in a movie of it's genre. If the team that did this movie did even a mediocre job at fulfilling the elements I described above, I would've been a contented viewer.
Sadly, however, Hollywood has somehow botched it's presentation of a would-be ideal movie to it's would-be ideal watcher.
The movie seemed to play out like a bad RPG videogame, with fight scenes filled with gratutious violence and gore, followed by "cut-scenes" of stunning visual effects that subtly hinted at a deep and attention-grabbing storyline that just wasn't there.
Direction:
The scenes moved from one to another in a very jerky fashion, raising many questions, while never answering them. So many different aspects of each character and their pasts were shown, but only in mere glimpses; enough to make you wish to know more, only to be dissapointed when that wish goes unfulfilled.
This invariably led to some ambiguity in the relationships amongst the characters, to the point where you're unsure whether some female characters are wives, concubines, daughters, or perhaps some convoluted mixture therein. Direction gets a D.
Story: This aspect of the film should've been easy to get right. The literary work already laid out the plot and storyline over a thousand years ago. It would've been very simple to adhere to, but instead this story could be described as "loosely based on" the original story. In addition, the parts of the storyline that can be gleaned by the viewers after having put together the hodge-podge that was presented, it was pretty pathetic indeed.
Story gets a D.
Acting: There were a lot of top-notch actors in this film, and so it's a shame that they were cast into the roles of such confusing, hollow, and altogether unlikeable characters. But I digress. There were the typical cheesy heroic lines common to this type of movie, and they were delivered as straight as possible by the actors, so not too many complaints here, although there was still something to be desired.
Acting gets a B minus.
Visuals: A movie done entirely with CG effects should have the most stunning CG effects around. At least, that's what logic should convey, but this movie threw that out the window in the first 5 minutes. The gratutious violence was misplaced and unnecessary, and in bad taste. Not to mention that it looked very fake and cartoony amidst some other very beautiful effects. You can find better gore by rewatching Army of Darkness. Seriously. The other visuals, like the glowing magic items, and the facial expressions, and the various textures were pretty good. At times the characters seemed to have no more detail than those within Shrek, however, so it's very hit or miss.
Visuals get a B Minus.
All in all, I give this combination atrocity to classic fantasy fiction/abhorrance to fantasy film a D+. Maybe worth the price of a 49 cent rental on an idle tuesday, as long as you have friends and beer. Very sad. |
My Public Profile 
