Fantasy smoothie.

The Movie: Eragon, directed by Stefen Fangmeier
Recommendation: Broomie
Reason: "I liked it, but it's not great."

For those who don't know, Eragon is the first of three parts of the Inheritance Trilogy, a series of novels written by a young man named Christopher Paolini. It was published when he was nineteen. That's a critical thing to note, because if the books are anything like the movie, he pretty much wrote a story about how awesome it would be to be a Jedi Knight with a dragon. This was compounded by the costuming department. They could have at least made an effort to distinguish the visual style of Eragon from Star Wars, or at least not put the lead actor in a jedi cloak. Some of the shots were even the same.

I'm not sure whose dead body was unearthed to squeeze John Malkovitch and Jeremy Irons' consent to participate out of them, but it must have been significant. Maybe they killed Jimmy Hoffa, I don't know, but I can't figure out why they decided to be in this movie. Jeremy Irons' should have at least learned his lesson about doing these things after he played Profion in the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Eragon, at the very least, managed to be better than D&D.

Essentially, the plot was a mashup of Star Wars and Dragonriders of Pern (complete with references to riders surviving if their dragon dies, but the opposite not happening), with some Lord of the Rings thrown in for flavor. It was a teenage boy's fantasy, no girls allowed. That's dandy, all well and good, but I prefer a little more umph in my fantasy movies.

-98/365 down, 267/365 to go