It's a very pretty movie, and Jeremy Irons' voice has lost nothing. The animation for the dragon is quite nice.
However, I must now snark. I was good, I didn't snark out loud during the movie, and I managed to restrain myself after it was over. But it's gotta come out sometime.
The dialogue appears to have been purchased by the carload lot from Bob's Clichés (Motto: Selling only the most thoroughly tested clichés since Hector was a pup. All our words are overused for your convenience!). It does manage to come close to high-grade standard fantasy movie cliché levels on a couple of occasions, but these seem to be the equivalent of salting the worthless mining claim. If this is because they were trying to be faithful to the book, I'm glad reports claim Mr. Paolini is now writing better. If they represent an improvement, why not go whole hog and really rise to the occasion? If you can spring for talent like Malkovitch, Irons, Weisz, Hounsou, and Carlyle, why not go the extra little bit? Writers are much cheaper than actors, after all. And if the movie dialogue is in fact worse than the book--dearie me--why?.
Except for the names you know, and some less familiar veterans of the profession (mostly British, from what I could tell) the acting is not even, and at times is an actual embarrassment. Some of this is because the actors are young and inexperienced; in other cases it's because they don't need to be in movies. The performance of the bead-bedizened girl-child playing the fortuneteller represents a direct insult to that great American industry, the wood by-products producers. Weyerhauser, Georgia Pacific, et alia may have grounds for a class action suit here. They should hold out for screen credits on the DVDs at least.
The doughty rebels hold out in a mountain fortress that combines breath-taking natural beauty with the best traditions of movie fantasy fortresses, and the rebels themselves appear to have chosen the site not just for its defensibility, but because it's located in the center of the textile-mining industry, amid the dyestuffs deposits, and close to the rich tassel outcroppings. There appear to be rich deposits of chain mail veils in the area as well, along with an extensive placer-mining industry for decorative studs. I'm still trying to figure out the logic behind the one-sleeved leather garments some of the characters are wearing, although I was able to place the inspiration for the clothing worn by Djimon Hounsou and his chief sidekick at once, in the Winky Army of the Wicked Witch of the West. To my credit, I did not start chanting "O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!" until we were on the way home. Stringwoman joined in.
You think I jest unkindly, but years of fantasy movie viewing have given me the sure and certain knowledge that Eragon will be mined extensively--nay, is being mined even as we speak--for clothing ideas by those members of the SCA who have no notion of historic clothing but what they see in the movies. Sooner or later, the garments will be entered in costuming contests at local events, and I will be asked to judge them, and will have to find nice things to say so that I will not be seen as a Cruel and Heartless Laurel of Doom. Also, Carlyle's Koolaid-red hair will only further encourage this tonsorial trend among the tragically hip young.*
This brings me to a point that all too often arises in fantasy movies (fantasy writers don't do it as much--although The Tough Guide to Fantasyland** is evidence that they do it enough to snark at): the Bad Guys, having conquered through foul means and treachery whatever there is to conquer, are content to exist in poorly-lit squalor (the open fires and torches in this movie may well have raised Hungary and Slovakia past the Kyoto Protocol's limits for carbon dioxide release--maybe the producers agreed to plant some more trees or something) with uncomfortable furniture and altogether too much bare rock decor. What's the point? If you've sold out everybody and everything you should have held dear to be Mr. Big, shouldn't you have Cool Stuff to show for it? You don't have to go whole hog with the dancing girls and Lucullan repasts if your tastes are more austere, but the conditions in which Galbatorix (students of the classics are no doubt aware that Galba was a short-term fill-in Emperor who couldn't managed to keep the Right People bribed) chooses to exist suggest that one reason he's hot to get the rebels is because they took all the furniture and other creature comforts with them when they took out for the hills.
I resist the urge to comment at length on the Big Bad Bruisers, who look like less-clean and more facially-tattooed offensive linebackers who have traded in the pads and jerseys for leather and bits of armor, and fight very badly in the best tradition of the Tough Guide. The part where they skulk up through the hidden passages of the rebel outpost caused me to feel that their sense of urgency was not so much to find and kill the Good Guys lest Robert Carlyle demonstrate the offensive capabilities of his manicure on them, but because they were desperately searching for some talcum powder to deal with their chafing issues.
I can imagine, though, the conversations between Carlyle, Malkovitch, and Irons in make-up. Comparisons between Carlyle and Malkovitch as to whose acrylic nails are uglier, debates over where to pick up the best Tokaji*** and which vintages to look for, chortling over the general dreadfulness of the dialogue, ruminations from Carlyle on how many more interesting roles the paycheck from this film will permit him to take, gloating from Irons and Carlyle over the fact that they won't have to make it through more dreadful dialogue in the next movie, smug replies from Malkovitch about how the money he'll be getting will allow him to fund the interesting movies Carlyle would rather be in, and general kvetching at Weisz, who by doing voice work cleverly avoided the make-up trailer and the ugly manicures altogether.
The mountains are lovely, though.
*This trend is unfair to all the other wonderful colors Koolaid makes for hair. Plus, it's unfair to royal blue, which is at least as attractive as that crimson shade.
**No one connected with this movie has read this book. If you have not, you should.
***One hopes they were paid enough to allow them to restock their cellars. If not, they should kick their agents. Hard.
