Dragonheart DVD > Reviews > Hit and Myth

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Good
Soundtrack	Average

Advantages:	Dragon CGI is cool, kids will love it
Disadvantages:	Plot drags, plastic characters, Americans in Medieval England?

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

What is it exactly about the fantasy genre which seems to make it virtually impossible to transplant from the written word to the visual screen? Surely of all the movie genres out there this should be one of the richest veins for Hollywood to plunder, especially seeing as fantasy movies have such an enormous built in audience before the cameras even start rolling. There are countless works of fantasy fiction, millions of fans of this and the board games, computer software etc. which sprung up around it and yet you can count successful or worthy fantasy movies on just one hand! Labyrinth, Conan, Lord Of The Rings, The Beastmaster(I liked it anyway) spring to mind, countless others were instantly forgettable whilst still more like Red Sonja would vie for a place on anyone’s worst movies of all time listings. Dragonheart is a movie which is aimed at the family audience and as such is mercifully watchable although nothing to get too excited over in any other sense. I’m usually quite down on so called family movies coming out of Hollywood because in general this seems to be an excuse for laziness on the behalf of film-makers who already know they have a built in audience, and the ‘family’ part tends to mean ‘kids’ whilst the rest of us will sit and suffer. Dragonheart is at least palattable for an adult audience, dull and plodding and should have been better, but palattable.

Dragonheart is little more than the kind of pithy generic Hollywood adventure story we’re used to with a big dragon, smelly peasants and some mediaeval hokum thrown in. Same old sh*t, different setting if you like. The basic plot revolves around a disillusioned knight, a big-ass dragon, a feisty mediaeval babe and of course, an evil villainous king to make way for an obvious ‘vanquish the meanie’ plot. The disillusioned knight Bowen(Dennis Quaid) used to be King Einon’s(David Thewlis) mentor except Einon turned against him and chose to be an evil sod instead, ignoring the honourable path. Bowen left his service and became a dragonslayer instead, hunting out the supposed foul beasts who terrorise the countryside which is where he comes upon Draco who turns out to be the last dragon alive and anything BUT a nasty fearsome dragon and in a most unlikely twist, dragon and dragonslayer team up to make this one of the most bizarre examples of the greatly over-used buddy movie device I’ve ever seen...beats the tiresome straight cop/crazy cop routine anyway eh? It’s the exactly the same idea though, mismatched partners go after the well connected ‘criminal’ dude, crack some jokes and get into some crazy situations. Anyway, umm dragon and dragonslayer team up then, scam a few peasants before joining up with a feisty village girl(Dina Meyer) who obviously becomes a love interest because this is Hollywood and you simply must have a romantic angle, no matter what the movie and they take on the King and his scurrilous regime...

Released in the same summer season as the likes of Mission Impossible and Twister, at a time when natural disaster movies were ruling the roost, it was obvious it wouldn’t take the summer season by storm, with most waiting for a video release, but I saw it at the flicks at the time and you haven’t lost anything from waiting. You’d have thought a humungous fire breathing lizard might have benefited from a 40ft screen but nope, not thanks to how this movie is directed anyway, i.e. dumbed down for the family audience. Sean Connery’s ‘Draco’ comes across as the more reasonable, philosophical, friendly and generally willing to help others than the average human being so, despite some great CGI, there is nothing whatsoever imposing or impressive about him as soon as he opens his computer generated mouth. Understandably, you don’t want a monsterous firebreathing dragon scaring the pants off of the world’s little darlings, but Draco’s actions look so clumsy and unimpressive that it’s kinda tough to equate him with the word ‘dragon’ at times and he is on screen so much and in such ‘human’ or conversational situations that the whole dragon thing quickly becomes by-the-by.

Sean Connery who voices Draco seems to be on cruise control throughout yet again, obviously chosen for the role because Hollywood needed someone sounding suitably gruff and quaintly Scottish in accent for the American audiences which automatically means Sean since proper casting is something Hollywood isn’t interested in. His is a poor casting decision to go along with the rest which leaves just Dennis Quaid as the only actor to come out of here with any degree of credibility although his part is written to be so flat and dull that it’s a wonder he manages to salvage anything. His love interest, with her heavy 20th century American accent (in mediaeval England of course), is pretty shallow and there isn’t even the faintest romantic spark to speak of between the two as a result or both this and the ‘family thing’ which makes for some heavy handed fumbling around the subject. Surely it’s not asking to much for someone to stray from the generic blueprints and just leave things like the romantic angle out if your intended audience means you can’t include it?! Worst of all though is David Thewlis as Einon, supposedly ruthless etc. but toned down to simply coming across as a snivelling snot instead who doesn’t seem to have done much to make you hate him (other than being a snivelling snot) which makes it hard to care whether he is put to the sword or not which is erm, the whole point of the picture...

There are a few worthwhile scenes here for the adult viewer, a few well shot moments which stand out (Draco rearing silhouetted against the sunset is pretty memorable) but it’s all quite humdrum and plodding otherwise. You’d not expect ‘plodding’ from a fantasy romp with dragons, knights and evil king’s perhaps but it is. The movie literally bogs down in trivialities far too often as if we are to be in awe of the CGI dragon(which you won’t be after 5 mins) and not give a damn about anything else after the initial scenes as it turns into another rehash of the mis-matched partners thing Hollywood has offered us so many times before. Interspersed throughout the doldrums are a few dragon related action scenes which won’t have you on the edge of your seats because they’ve trivialised Draco to a friendly old bean rather than a powerful fire-breathing beast, some abysmally choreographed sword fights which again won’t have you on the edge of your seat because there is no sense of danger or adventure in them and the too frequent attempts at humour which are at best ‘lip-curling’ but more often eyeball rolling. Still, the scenery looks nice and the costumes authentic enough and it seems to amuse it’s target audience despite all of this.

I’m not going to slate Dragonheart too harshly(too late maybe methinks?) because it’s obviously not meant to be aimed at an adult audience anyway. I’m sure there’ll have been plenty who watched it because it’s a fantasy movie and pickings are rather slim and came away thinking it was a little ‘weak’ but it’s children who will enjoy this most and no adult is going to suffer too horribly through watching it with them. You’d have more fun watching a Monsters Inc. or a Shrek of course, but Dragonheart is 3 star watchable for an adult audience. Call it a 4 star movie for kids though, perhaps 5 if they love the whole fantasy thing. I wouldn’t have said there was anything too scary or unsuitable in here aside from a few killings, dubious morality displayed by the heroes (scamming the poor, murder etc. the usual family friendly stuff :oP) and erm a big scaly firebreathing lizard which you might find issue with if you tend to generally find issue with PG movies. Otherwise, yeah great, kids’ll love it, you won’t hate it, which has to be a good thing.