Eragon

Director: Stefan Fangmeier
Screenwriter: Peter Buchman
Starring: Ed Speleers, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Djimon Hounsou
Running time: 104 mins
Certificate: PG

The life of young farmboy Eragon (Speleers) is changed forever when he happens upon a mysterious stone in a forest. Soon his stone reveals itself to be an egg, hatching into a dragon (voiced by Weisz) and sealing his fate to be a Dragon Rider. Under the guidance of secretive old story-teller Brom (Irons), Eragon sets out to help rebel force the Varden against the land's evil king Galbatorix (Malkovich).

Eragon is based on Christopher Paolini's identically-titled fantasy novel which, though not a masterpiece, is an enjoyable page-turner. If eked out well, there's an equally entertaining, if derivative, film to be found in the book's plot - unfortunately director Stefan Fangmeier's effort is not that film.

Most of this film's problems stem from its differences from the source material. Helping to maintain interest in the book was the fact that the readers felt that they were learning about the history of Alagaesia and its current predicament as Eragon did. In the film, most of this is handed to us on a plate by a spoilsport voice-over, which is expanded upon by our being shown most of (what the film sees as) the main characters within the first twenty minutes - none of whom give us much to look forward to.

Aside from a relatively faithful introductory 20 minutes, both the pacing and the actual storyline are reworked terribly. The writers skip over innumerable dramatic sequences which would have helped the audience to invest in the characters that have been included, in favour of action scenes deemed to be more exciting. Meanwhile, an entire dwarven society is unaccounted for and some characters are either missing (Solembum), stretched almost out of recognition (Angela) or criminally underwritten (Murtagh). In a few cases such reworkings are likely to cause problems if, God forbid, they decide to commit the other books of Paolini's trilogy to screen. The changes would be much easier to justify if the resultant narrative made sense on its own terms, but unfortunately this is frequently not the case.

Taken purely as an action-based film aimed at kids (certainly more so than the novel), Eragon is passable at best. There are numerous scenes of flying dragons and people rushing around on horseback, but there's little effort made to tell us why, and less to make us care. Saphira the dragon herself is done well enough, though is certainly not the best-conceived screen beast of her kind.

The cast boasts a few good names, including Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Rachel Weisz as Saphira's voice - however, they do little to raise Eragon's quality. Irons's performance is certainly the least embarrassing, though he's helped along by the scriptwriters in that he has the fewest silly lines. Meanwhile Ed Speleers, who plays the eponymous hero, looks earnest enough throughout, but never makes us feel anything for his character's plight.

Anyone who has read and enjoyed Paolini's epic book would be well advised to steer clear of this film, which is half the length a true adaptation would require. Those who haven't may have a marginally better chance of enjoying Eragon, though it may leave you reaching for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings to remind yourself how it's meant to be done.