Customer Reviews

Dragonquest

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

'DragonQuest' is an absolute gem to people who, like me, love camp cinema. At no point in this film did I stop laughing, and I think I actually brushed against death when the song at the end credits started due to lack of sufficient oxygen. If you're looking for a "good" fantasy fiction film, you need to run for the hills. However, if you're looking for a painfully derivative, terribly written and unbelievably over-acted movie, this needs to be in your permanent collection. Marc Singer's "Popeye Meets Yoda" rendition of his character is worth the price of the film on its own, er, merits.

You'll never be drawn into the wretched story, but the meta-experience is a complete blast!

I'm so glad there are small budget non-grandiose fantasy adventure movies that don't have the best CGI or even so-called academy award winning acting in it. Their just fun (even interesting) movies that aren't reaching for the stars, nonetheless can be good in their own way. DragonQuest (2009) is one of these.

The story here is of a fabled world and a reluctant young man (Arkadi/Daniel Bonjour) who is more interested in the ladies yet nevertheless goes on a journey, the path of discovering the seven virtues which is ultimately an inner journey of self-discovery for him. It is a journey which brings victory and his well-being/maturity. And which includes here i might add, a reliable, solid, true companion Katya/Jennifer Dorogi - a strong and well played female part. Kind of a yin/yang thing (of which also plays into the whole Dragon theme of the story, but instead of male and female, its light and darkness.

This is done in a non-heavy handed way with a playful wise teacher Maxim/Marc Singer. The only real setback for this though is his "death scene", which is truly ridiculous, and mainly because the scene is so heavy-handed with his last speech being so self-important. It just didn't go well with the rest of his character. But i just looked passed it.

Now besides that, the guys who put this together really put some thought into this movie - well made - just don't expect another movie like Lord of the Rings or make any comparison to anything else - just take it for what it is (don't look for perfection) and you might find something interesting and enjoy it.

Ok, I wasn't expecting much, and there wasn't much to Dragonquest. However, Marc Singer's character in it is too bizzare! He seems to shift from a more grizzled form of yoda to a crazy irishman, and that I found to be priceless.

Another Asylum movie. Some are good, and some are not so good. This move is somewhere in the middle, with a pretty fast-paced (meaningless?) plot and average acting. The fight scenes ranged from slow and clumsy to rather well-choreographed. The limited pieces of orchestral music are effective, but not played nearly long enough; perhaps more of the budget should have gone to the musical score and performance.

Some of the most important scenes in the movie are boring and poorly-filmed. Marc Singer's final battle-scene should have been serious and important, but it felt like just another death. The climactic battle . . . kinda stunk.

Needless nudity and a drug reference in the first few minutes of the movie was both funny and unnecessary. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are archetypal movies, and this movie combines the two. This movie could have been epic, but it was only run-of-the-mill. Two stars.

OMG, I mistook this for another film and I couldn't even watch this all the way through. This is garbage, AVOID AVOID. Oh well lesson to me for being click happy. ;(

"Daragonquest" should have been a fairly good movie since it had a decent cast, a passable plot, and even a fair amount of CGI effects. I actually like even mostly bad Sword & Sorcery movies, so it's hard to say exactly when I noticed that getting through the entire 1 hour and 25 minutes was going to be rough.

I'm not really sure at which market this straight to video movie was aimed at. The lead character (and "Hero of Virtue" I might add), Arkadi (Daniel Bonjour), besides being woefully passive, is fond of smoking mind altering magic "weed" and spying on partially undressed girls. There are several other "real" actors, including Marc Singer (who looks almost permanently annoyingly amused), Brian Thompson (seriously underutilized), Jason Connery (actually not too bad), and Jennifer Dorogi (really not action movie hero material). The supporting cast was wooden at best and gave almost laughable delivery of their lines.

The plot follows a standard quest type format and should have been enough to hold the movie together, but sadly it was dragged down by the bad acting, a really bad script, and very bad, although plentiful, CGI effects. The cinematography was fairly good in most of the traveling scenes but was seriously marred by the bad and disjointed editing of the action scenes that was required to mask the poor hand to hand fighting skills of the actors. There are also a painful amount of continuity errors and lack of attention to detail; for example, I am fairly certain that a naked sword carried in rope belt would not make a "metallic ringing" sound when drawn.

There really is very little to recommend about this movie, other than it is in Sword & Sorcery genre. Only if you have a driven desire (like me) to see all movies of this type would want to invest your time here, otherwise I would pass on this one (I only wish I could have).

CFH

They have milked the dragon model to death. It's actually more impressive in the animatics than in the movie.
I'm actually a fan of most of their "mockbusters" but this was a waste of time. First one that had me fast forwarding through it.

This movie had a low budget, which is stated in the special features on the DVD itself, and it does suffer from this. But they did a good job pulling it together and it is better than most low budget movies. The story is sound, the actors are ok and did there job well. The photography is nicely done, it is not epic, but it is good. The special effects are very well done, modern CGI for the dragons.

The story itself is a simple one, very much like the Star Wars movie, a farm boy is raised not knowing he is the chosen one who is suddenly thrust into an adventure. One of the cut scenes in the special features on the DVD had the boy complaining to grandfather about not being able to go work in the mines that all of his friends had already started working there. That would have been to much of a copy of Star Wars, good that they removed it. Other scenes that they cut I wished that they left in, it would have made the movie flow better, that is to say easier to understand the story.

The basic story is that the boy's caretaker, i.e. grandfather, undertook the quest himself and came near the end and failed. So he raised the boy and schooled him in the values need to complete the quest. However before the boy is fully trained the dragon is released and the boy has to begin the quest early. What is the quest? Well in the land there was a group of monks who were knights and had keep the land in a state of harmony, until one of the monks turned bad and drew power from the dark forces, creating a dragon. So the boys quest and the quest that grandfather had failed at? It is to collect the seven stones of virtue and call a good dragon to battle the evil one. The boy must learn the virtues of prudence, justice, restraint, fortitude, faith, hope and love. If this sounds to Christian to some of you I might point out that the seven virtues come from Plato and Aristotle and were only adopted by early church fathers (they do not come from the Bible, what is in the Bible is the fruit of the Spirit and does over lap in some cases with the seven virtues).

But it is a good story and well worth buying the DVD for to watch. The DVD cover states "Destined to be a fantasy adventure classic in the tradition of Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia" A big claim, we will see if it comes to pass.

HORRIBLE CGI AND AWFUL SCRIPT AND ACTING COMBINE TO MAKE THIS A REAL HOWLER. MARC SINGER USES A WICKED SNARL AND SPOUTS RIDICULOUS PLATITUDES AND HAS ONE OF THE WORST DEATH SCENES EVER. VILLAIN BRIAN THOMPSON HIDES WISELY BEHIND A HOODED ROBE AND LOOKS EMBARRASSED. THE DRAGON EFFECTS AND THE BATTLE SCENES ARE ATROCIOUS. AVOID.