Eragon -- 2006 -- PG

This was one of those movies that makes me sad. Not because of the storyline, but because of the execution. It has a decent plot to it that is engaging, but they spent no time developing the characters. This movie is based on a book, and they got the run time to an hour and forty-five minutes, but it's a film that would have benefitted greatly from having another 30 minutes to it.

The plot follows a boy who finds a stone that hatches into a dragon. He finds out he is a dragon rider and was born into that position. The dragon had been waiting centuries to hatch in his possession. Well, the king wants the egg, then the dragon rider dead, so he sends out his people to destroy everything in their path. They wipe out the boy's family and he survives by way of not being there. So he sets off with his dragon and a mentor to join the resistence against the king, all the while him wanting to get the guy who did this. It's not a bad hero's journey, and we get our fair share of detours along the way before we reach the resistence and he takes on his full role to save the day.

There are a couple of minor plot hiccups that throw my logic off a little. The rpimary one is the dragon and its role with the rider. They want to get to this resistence, and it's miles away. They want to get there post haste, but rather than the rider taking the dragon and meeting the mentor there, he rides along on a horse while the dragon flies overhead. This happens throughout the entire film. I just wonder why our boy can't just hop the dragon and get there, since no one is looking for the old guy, and he'll show eventually.

A second logic leap was the travel time for one scene. Our boy finds out about the girl and flies the dragon to where she is being kept. He gets in there and finds her but is then set upon by the bad guys. The old guy, who was days away by horse (supposedly) shows up in the heat of the battle to bail our boy out. How the heck did he get there so fast?

The biggest problem in this film, though, is character development. The plot is fairly extensive and it moves constantly as the film flows along. But the trouble is we never slow down enough to learn much about the characters or get a sense of who they are or why we should care about this quest. We never see much remorse for the boy losing his family, nor do we understand his relationship with the old guy or the girl he rescues. We get an idea of him and the dragon, but we never know much more than the basics. We meet the king briefly, and get he was a big shot once, but we don't get a good sense of him. We meet his lacky, this shade character, but beyond him being cruel, we never know what his motives are either. We are given a slew of different characters who have the potential to be very interesting, but they are never taken beyond two dimensions to the point that we are engaged in the story and feel like a part of what is going on. Plot isn't everything, but that's all we got.

So in the end, it's a decent movie to watch, but ultimately not very engaging since we are not permitted to relate to any of the characters. I know this was a trilogy of books, but after checking online, I didn't find any info about the remainder of the trilogy being made. Had a little more been given to the characters, we would have had something here, but as it is, it is just an average movie.