ROTTEN TOMATOES: Critical Consensus: "Charlotte's Web" Is Good, Indeed; Smith Is Strong, "Pursuit" Less So; "Eragon" Gets Burned Comments

Critical Consensus: "Charlotte's Web" Is Good, Indeed; Smith Is Strong, "Pursuit" Less So; "Eragon" Gets Burned

by Alex Vo | December 14, 2006

Summary

This week at the movies, we've got a barnyard full of talking animals ("Charlotte's Web," starring Dakota Fanning and the voices of Julia Roberts and Robert Redford), a real-life rags-to-riches story ("The Pursuit of Happyness," starring Will Smith), and a tale of dragons and swordplay ("Eragon," starring Edward Speleers and Jeremy Irons). What do the critics have to say? Back to Article

(1-6 of 6 posts) | Reply

Ophiuchus writes:
on Dec 14 2006 07:46 PM

[b]So, Eragon: the Movie Sucks[/b]
At the risk of sounding smug: I freaking told you so.

(Reply to this)

LampEft writes:
on Dec 15 2006 05:01 AM

In reply to this comment (#851190)
Just the commercials and trailers for the movie would have made that apparent to any sane person. When I first saw them I figured it was going to be laughably bad. I thought I was watching ads for a bargain-basement fantasy movie from the early 80s.

(Reply to this)

AlienSeed writes:
on Dec 15 2006 07:44 AM

I watched Eragon last night, and I must say I had a great time...at the expense of the film. I was watching with some friends and we were MST3000'ing it the whole time. The ONLY way the movie could have been worse was if Uwe Boll had directed it, although it did already seem like he had a hand in the production somewhere. I read the critics' reviews on this site after I got home and they said exactly the same things as the jokes we were cracking. This movie was a direct ripoff of Star Wars. Before the end of the movie, I was shouting that there was going to be a rebel base and a final battle there, sure enough....yeah.

(Reply to this)

SpikesInMySkull writes:
on Dec 15 2006 10:34 AM

It's really sad actually... this it what happens when your home schooled by people who only tell you how great and talented you are., never exposed to any critism or competition. You write some story, just like and no better than any of did when we where teenagers, but all you hear are people telling you what a genious you are, your parent cough up a bunch of money to publish you, people buy your book because everybody loves a prodigee, and let's face it, the market for books marketed to adolecents doesn't set the bar too high.

But now, you a big-budget holiday movie release, all bets are off. Noone cares if your a prodigee. Noone's going to cut you any slack because your a kid, if anything, it's just now going to be that much harder for them to take you seriously.

It's really unfair to take a kid who never even had to compete with his peers and make him compete with Peter Jackson. Oh well, we all learn about the real world sometime. I hope he doesn't give up, given another 15 years, this kid may have something.

(Reply to this)

nogard64 writes:
on Dec 15 2006 11:58 AM

sweet pursuit RT meter went up to FRESH!!! Of course its FRESH becuase its starring the FRESH prince of bel air! haha

Sing-along time! everyone sing with me!

Now this is the story all about how,
My life got flipped, turned upside down,
And I�d like to take a minute, just sit right there,
I�ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air.

In West Philadelphia, born and raised
On the playground is where I spent most of my days.
Chillin� out, maxin�, relaxin all cool,
And all shootin� some b-ball outside of the school.

(Reply to this)

synergyred writes:
on Dec 16 2006 09:24 PM

I guess I'm in the middle where it comes to Eragon, on both the book and the movie. I thought that the movie had it's strengths. It was very well casted. A-list actors like Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich manage to create characters that transcent their sourses, and even the new kid that played Eragon did decently. I can honestly say that I have no real complaints about the cast (now how the characters were written...). Also, it's a visually stunning film. Everything, from the costumes and locations to the special effects just suit the film so well. Even the score is quite nice and Saphira is as stunning as she was meant to be.

But I just can't get past two bothersome things. First, it, like the book, just draws on too much from Star Wars and Lord of the rings. Part of me really wish that Christopher P. would have just WAITED with his book and had written or revised it as a more mature writing in his mid-twentieis then a kid at 15. There potential there, espeically in his ability to create interesting languages. but he just can't get past the sources that probably inspiried him to write fantasy/sci-fi in the first place. This is something that actually plagues most young writers. I know when I was 13 eveyrthing I wrote resembled Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a result, the books and film come off less impressive as they should. Eldest was so frustrating that it not only ruined my Eldest-reading expirence but my Eragon reading expirence as well. Unless Empire can restore my faith in the Inheritance trilogy, the books will not be making a place in my permanent collection. It makes me so sad to see something that could have been good lowered to borderline plagerism.

The other thing that bothered me is how much that it was condensed. Come on now! Another half an hour could have added so much to the film and the characters!

So I'm not sure if I'll be seeing Eldest. As the book angered me so much, but Eragon as a movie had it's good and bad points. I'm really glad that it was well casted though. It would have been such a dissapointment without that factor.

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