I can't remember if I ever made an entry about how bad the Eragon film is. Whether I did or not, I'm making one now.

Right. Let's start with the trivial things shall we? In the book Eragon is not 17, he does not have blonde hair and he actually has a personality different from every single generic fantasy/action hero in every sub-par fantasy book or film. The Raz'ac are supposed to have beaks, look nothing like their film manifestations, none of them die (VERY important) and I'm certain there's a different number in the film than there is in the book. Galbatorix is NEVER supposed to be seen, so we don't even know what he looks like yet but considering he's an ancient Dragon Rider, he probably looks more elvish. On the subject of elves, last I heard, they had pointed ears. What happened to Arya's? On another note, since when was Angela JUST a fortune teller (and an unconvincing one at that) and when did the Urgals become big men with bald heads and tattoos?

With many of the trivial details aside (but by no means all), let's move onto the plot. It seems to me that whoever spearheaded the idea simply decided to pick out a few words he liked, throw 9/10ths of the plot out the window and re-write everything around those few happy words into something that only partially resembles the actual plot if you've been hit on the head by a sack of bricks, thrown down a large hill infested with angry gnomes armed with mallets and land in a stone ditch where, just to make sure, a team of disgruntled peasants have amassed to brutally remove whatever is left of your intelligence with a chisel. Not only do they simply cut out almost everything that happens, major events (or those that are left) are thrown together like tadpoles in a blender so it's almost impossible to distinguish where one begins and the other ends. Apparantly, Eragon goes from being a happy little farm boy with a blue stone to the hero of the Varden, crossing leagues and leages of country being pursued all the while in about two days. Oh, and Galbatorix manages not only to amass his army, but to get them across a vast mountain range from half way across the country in no more than twenty minutes. Not to mention Eragon managing to become a competant swordsman and magician over the course of about a day having started a novice at both at its beginning. It holds together about as well as a pile of sand in a tornado.

I'm not finished yet. I've yet to mention the dialogue. From the moment Galbatorix announces "I suffer without my stone" you know the writer has about as much ability as a drowning beetle floating obnoxiously in someone's soup. The entire thing suffered painfully as the writer attempted to make grand and earth-shattering points with every single sentance. The result? A pile of repetetive drivel so unbelievable and ridiculous it makes a national sonnet-writing competition for sheep seem an almost everyday occurance. You know what I really hate? When the writer puts a phrase in somewhere loaded with undue significance and then, later on, throws it back at you with a smirk as if to say "wow, look! Aren't I clever?" No Mr Writer you are not. I don't care that you based the entire plot on a single pretentious and over-bearing sentance. I don't want to be reminded that "truth is greater than a sword" or "courage lies in the heart" or whatever other unnaturally significant phrase you want to come up with. People simply do not go around saying that to each other and then suddenly, in a moment of sudden realisation, proclaim it as if it were the meaning of all creation. Ok so Eragon doesn't do that as such, but it does seem to attach itself to certain annoying phrases that were almost bearable once but just sound cheesy when repeated again. I mean really. Dialogue is meant to be the characters speaking and should, therefore, at least act on the pretense that it's meant to sound in some small way natural or realistic. It should not be the writer's excuse to big themselves up and make important self-rightious statements that sound like they came from the mouth of a crusading fanatic than whatever character they are meant to be portraying (unless it's a crusading fanatic, but they'd probably start talking like everyone else should).

with the exception of maybe two people, I found the acting to be at best unimpressive. At worst? Let's not even go there. It's as if they were each handed a little card saying '"you are [insert stereotype]" and told to run with it, then bashed repeatedly round the head whenever they tried to do something new or original until their portrayal of the character was as grossly inaccurate in their representation as modern art. I cringed so often at just how mind-numbingly blatant and painful some of the clichés were. Alright, they're working with a book that has a fair few of them itself, but not as many as that. Yes, alright. Arya is the 'love interest'. Except she went out of her way to show no interest in Eragon whatsoever, if I recall. With that in mind, I would very much like the penultimate scene in the film explained.

I particularly want to have a rant about the character of Eragon. He could be stereotypical in many ways, yes. It's the classic 'farm boy inherits his destiny and becomes a great hero' story, and he fits right into it. That is not the same as having enough character to be played just as well by a moth-eaten piece of crumbling bark (I'm not even sure if moths eat wood. They do now, anyway). He really did have the personality of an old discarded brick forgotten about it the construction of a lavatory extention. He went from 'I'm a poor little farm boy' to 'no! I'm a crusading hero with a sword out to right wrongs like every single crusading hero before me!' in the blink of an eye and seemed uncertain the whole way through as to which he actually was. On second thoughts, that's being too generous. It almost makes him sound like he had some kind of recognisable personality. I'd hate to give anyone such a mistaken impression.

If you hadn't guessed it already, I think Eragon works about as well as using cake and jam to build a house instead of bricks and mortar. It shows so much promise and looks delicious, but suddenly loses its attraction the moment you step in the door and it all collapses on you in one large mushy heap. It's such a blatant attempt to cash in on the LoTR wagon it hardly deserves to be called a film. It's more of a 'please give us your money we want to be big and popular and famous' heap of second-rate trash cunningly disguised with badly altered stickers from the latest big fad. I cannot believe I actually sat through it twice. If time is money then I want the cash equivilant to the amount of time I wasted in front of that poor excuse for a money-spinner back, please.