3/10 To put it simply, Eragon lacks. The story is rushed unexplained and poorly thought out, the acting is below par, and the cinematography is annoying with its tilted angles and range so close to the action so that you can't see what is going on.

The writing of the movie is by far its weakest aspect. The story is rushed quickly jumping from one thing to the next without any plot development so the viewer is left constantly wondering what is going on, one second our main character is a naive farmer, the next he is suddenly a fully experienced warrior with absolutely no evidence showing exactly where he gained this experience from. Entire scenes of the movie plod along with absolutely no meaning or relevance to the story, scenes which should have been cut out of the movie to make the narrative flow better. Characters come and go as they please with no relevance to the story, such as the archer who just suddenly appears out of nowhere and then just aimlessly follows the main characters without actually adding anything to the story. It almost seems as if the movie was written by a 9th grade high school student for his English class.

The acting of the movie is far below par, as it seems that nobody in this movie seems to have emotions as if all the characters were cyborgs from the Terminator series… or Steven Segal. For example there is the scene where the main character discovers that the stone he has found isn't a rock but actually a dragon egg as the egg hatches. Now normally people seeing a small monster burst out of a rock would express quite some level of surprise or shock, but all our star does is raise his eyebrows slightly and give a pathetic tiny gasp. Every character in the entire movie is like this, if someone is crying over a slain comrade all they do is frown and have a look of "dang it" on their face, if someone is cheering over victory, all they do is leer and go "woooo". The emotion is non existent.

Eragon is a poor movie at best that fails to be entertaining, especially when compared to the other movies it is copying they style of such as "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter". It seems that the makers of this movie thought, "This movie has swords, magic, old English style speech, horses and dragons, it therefore must be good". They were wrong. The belief that just because your movie looks a bit like "Lord of the Rings" it must be good like it, is incorrect.

Note: Spoilers ahead.

"Eragon" is about the young idiot Eragon, who lives in Hobbiton.

…Okay, maybe not, but his home looks a bit too much like it for it to be coincidental. In fact, the entire movie looks like the sets came from a LotR yard sale. Some of the opening scenes as well, sadly. I've never heard an evil king open with a line like "I suffer without my stone", though, so that's new. He does so because it was stolen from him, by people who've "been carrying it for as long as we can remember". I don't get it.

Anyway, Eragon is a 17-year-old farm boy who finds this blue stone/egg, and it hatches into a blue, telepathic dragon that grows up in about 2 days. Because of this, the evil king wants him dead, 'cause the king went through a lot a trouble killing off all dragons except his own, so he's not really happy that there's a new one. By this point, Eragon's uncle gets killed by something resembling chirping shrubs, and his cousin has run off to avoid being drafted, so the poor guy is left with the dragon as his only friend and family.

However, a local bum turns out to be a former dragon rider, so he takes Eragon under his protection, and they go on a quest to find the freedom fighters "the Varden", to mobilize against the evil king. Now that a naive brat has a dragon, victory against the king's army is more or less guaranteed, you see. During the trip the older, wiser rider tries to teach the younger, dumber one some valuable lessons, but since Eragon is an idiot, he gets his teacher killed. How? Well, he dreams about this 13 years older stranger-girl who's being held prisoner at an enemy stronghold. Of course, he needs to go save her. Don't know why, and I don't know why he thinks he's the perfect person to do it. He nearly gets them all killed.

They eventually find the Varden, who turns out to be Africans, Scots and who knows what, since they're dressed in gold chain-mail and silk burkas and live in Minas Tirith… – sorry, the mountains. These people make absolutely no sense to me. What are they supposed to be? They're hiding among mountains after having fled from the king's army, and unless their leader is immortal, they can't have been there more than 10-15 years. Still, the upper sections of the "hideout" are delicately cut directly out of the rocks, but the lower ones consist of mud, and wooden poles tied together with rope. People are dressed in the most colorful and intricately patterned get-ups possible – preferably in expensive materials too. Except for the Scots, who're paranoid enough to wear armor 24-7, it seems. Who the hell are these people? Why do they think their clothes are more important than their defenses? They run into battle in long green-pink-yellow skirts and so much bling they make more noise than the invading army. Is all this explained in the book? I haven't read it.

Moving on, they're all attacked by some tattooed guys, and the king's army. Why I can't fathom. There's at least 24 hours between the enemy forces finding the Varden, and the actual attack. Why doesn't the king just fly in with his dragon and torch the lot as soon as he finds out the location? Then there'd be him, his dragon, his army and his sorcerer against a 17-year-old and a newly hatched dragon. I'd prefer those odds, if I were him.

But no, he leaves the dragon safely at home, and sends the army instead. An army that apparently consists largely or partly by the forced and unwilling, since the king drafts people from every village. They're lead by the sorcerer, Durza – who is, by the way, the only interesting thing in this entire movie. An army of oppressed, drafted people, set up to fight against freedom fighters… I wouldn't trust that to go well, but maybe Durza has some Jedi mind trick to keep them from deserting.

Moving on again, Eragon's dragon picks this exact moment to grow up enough to breath fire, and they save the day. They also kill the sorcerer, sadly, making sure that we'll have that much less to keep us awake in a possible sequel. Not that I expect that anybody will be making one anytime soon.

The movie mostly just feels stupid. The acting is really bad in most places, to the extent that I've seen better among 14-year-olds in live role-playing games. The all around plagiarizing of Lord of the Rings doesn't help, even if the almost-Balrog in the end looks nice. And I have nothing against Rachel Weisz or her voice, but why does Eragon's dragon sound like his mother? Especially when you just KNOW that the king's huge, black, bad-ass dragon is going to sound like Darth Vader?

So yes, maybe it's cool if you're a very young kid. I'm guessing they're the targeted audience anyway.

First things first, I have yet to read the book, but my brother absolutely loves it and says it is so worth the read. While the film could have been much better, there are redeeming qualities. Also, I do not think it is the worst fantasy film ever, that dishonour belongs to Dungeons & Dragons.

Starting with the redeeming qualities, the film is very assured visually and technically. The sets are wondrous and the costumes are very nice. Plus the cinematography was excellent, as was the sweeping score. The acting is uneven, but there were some good performances. Jeremy Irons, a great actor, does a good job as Brom acquiring a dry sense of humour, much better than he was in Dungeons & Dragons, somehow his overacting in that film managed to further bring it down. Also John Malkovich chews the scenery with glee as the tyrannical King Galbatorix, and Robert Carlyle is decent as Durza. The best thing though was the dragon Sapphira, very well designed with expressive voice work from Rachel Weisz, and the flying scenes and the CGI effects are a delight.

However, there are many things wrong with Eragon. One is that the film is too short, consequently the characters feel thinly sketched. This could be a reason why the relationship between Eragon and Sapphira came across as unconvincing. The story was a great idea, but due to the running time primarily it meanders all over the place and is unevenly paced(sometimes feeling rushed and sometimes it drags). Ed Speleers is rather bland as Eragon, handsome yes but bland. It is pretty much the same for Sienna Guillory, gorgeous but unconvincing. The actors though are burdened by a very hammy and lacklustre script that could've done with more intelligence and wit and there are parts where the direction is flawed.

Overall, not unbearably awful but I don't necessarily recommend it. 5/10 Bethany Cox