99 minutes of agony

There are so many bad things to say about Eragon that I don't even know where to begin. I saw this on opening night. The theatre was filled with expectant fans; all of us excited to see a great epic movie. Less than 90 seconds into the film, I realized that we had all made a huge mistake. Twenty minutes in I thought to myself "well, it can't get any worse". I was wrong about that too.

Before the movie ended at least half of the audience had walked out; the rest of us were openly guffawing and mocking the film.

Dragons! Dragons are always cool! How can you screw up a movie about dragons? Here is the recipe: Get a handful of unknown actors, and spice lightly with an excellent, talented, and respected few. Throw in a script written by a 12 year old Manga fan. Hire a director unschooled in literature, acting, or,.....oh hell, it doesn't matter at this point, just make sure your director has an unhealthy liking of Calvin Klein advertisements. Now try to fix the whole mess with several million dollars worth of CGI effects.

The movie Eragon is what is known as a career-killer. Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich will still be able to find work; but only because they both have an extensive body of excellent work behind them. Djimon Hounsou needs to fire his agent; his character was a sad caricature, he should have passed on this role. Rachel Weisz shouldn't be too hurt simply because she wasn't seen in the film (her voice work was excellent, and perhaps is the only redeeming thing about this waste of time). Other than these four, I seriously doubt that anybody involved in this film will ever be asked to work in the motion picture industry again. It was that bad.

I predict a new word will soon be added to the movie industry lexicon.

The producers of Eragon obviously failed to make their saving throw vs. stupidity.