Fire and Ice: The Dragon Chronicles (2008)

This movie has way too many shots of the same thing that makes the action sequences feel like a turtle running a 5k marathon. So many scenes should have been cut out entirely. Imagine watching the dragons fighting(doing somersaults around each other, then cut back to princess looking on, see dragons flying not really attacking each other, cut back to more looks of worry from princess, back and forth of this pointless dragon fights and worry looks for what seemed like way too long until finally i caved and just had to skip fwd a bit more until it was over. Bad directing is the key to why this movie sucked. The acting was alright i guess, some actors better then others. On the jacket it states "A Visually Spectacular(imo outright lie...unless they meant spectacularly awful), Fantasy Adventure(yeah its that) from the director of Catwoman(uh -oh catwoman sucked too)." That is supposed to be some thing good? (That made me laugh.) I mean the CGI is from 2008, it should be better then stingray like dragons that clearly don't blend into the background and looks real. Jurassic Park had better CGI then this and that was made back in 1993(so visually spectacular???? yeeeeah-right.) Costumes were meh.... I see they tried but it looks like a low budget webisode project and i've seen better webisode shows with much better wardrobe.My thinking is why did they even bother making this? Yeah, i only stuck around because Amy Acker(Angel) was a main lead.If your looking for a drinking game maybe watch this with friends and drink every time they say "dragons" or "princess", and you will be drunk real quick.

This was a cheapie DVD from the supermarket checkout bin. It stars Amy Acker (Fred from Angel), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep from the Mummy movies), John Rhys-Davies (from any fantasy movie which will stand still long enough for him to get into costume and nip in front of the camera), a chap called Tim Wisdom who I've never heard of before and never expect to hear of again given his achievements in this movie, and a couple of dozen people whose names end in -escu (which also applies to most of the crew).Intrepid princess Amy Acker gets stuck into finding a way of defending the kingdom from a fire-breathing dragon. Which involves setting an ice-breathing dragon onto it. Which, as it turns out, isn't actually that great an idea.Thing is, there's actually some potential here. Acker is OK, Vosloo is always fun, Rhys-Davies does his usual thing (Brian Blessed-lite), and the assorted -escus manage to be in the right place at the right time. More importantly, it looks good. The cinematographer plainly knows what he's up to, and the film is very attractively photographed. And despite a less than generous budget, the CGI dragons (clearly based on stingrays) are, for the most part, well animated and well integrated into the background plates, far more so than is usually the case for this sort of movie.But everything is massively let down by the script. Every plot development is either signalled well in advance or else is hugely predictable. There are constant exhortations to the princess to stay where she is, remain out of danger etc., and she takes no notice of any of them. By about the 10th time she has ignored all advice and rushed into peril, they even make a story point out of it.The -escus all swordfight by rushing at their opponent brandishing their swords over their head - clearly they all had the same swordfighting teacher, and he was crap.And regrettably the showdown scrap between the dragons is also crap - well animated, but nothing actually happens. And it doesn't happen A LOT. In fact you wonder whether it's ever going to stop not happening. And then factor in endless riding across the same hill, field, and bit of forest....In the end, though it's the script which lets it down.

A lot of my fellow reviewers like to tackle the technical side of every movie. Me, well I watch movies if they have someone I like in a major role or of a certain genre. In this case I watched this because it had Amy Acker in it and I have been missing her since "Angel" died. Also, it had John Rhys-Davies, whom I have liked since I saw him in "Sho-gun." John seems to have been making a living doing these types of films since the close of "Lord Of The Rings." This is not a new story-line, nor is it worth adding to your collection, but it is worth a view the next time it hits SyFy. The main plot is can a young man kill a dragon and save a King's kingdom. His father was, after-all, a dragon slayer of some note. Then there is the member of the King's court who is trying to throw a wrench in the works. The King, by the way, is played by Arnold Vosloo, who you might just remember from the The Mummy movies. This is just another of those quickly thrown together movies that have a few stars who gather in Romania for a few weeks of shooting.

Right now eight people have rated this movie at 8.8. Believe me, it's nowhere near that good. I'm suspecting that, the others having seen a lot of dreck on the Sci-Fi Channel, are actually floored by mere competence.What F&I has going for it is a coherent plot, good sets, decent photography and likable characters. What's going against it is a formula script and adequate-to-poor special effects. The dragons do their job, if not always imaginatively but the really laughable creatures are some orc-type walking bushes called the Forest People. Fortunately their two appears are brief.Also too brief is John Rhys-Davies performance as the hero's mentor, predictably the best in the film. The reluctant hero (Tom Wisdom) and plucky heroine (Amy Acker) are adequate and easy to watch. The rest of the performances are by-the-numbers, though none outstandingly bad.The best way to enjoy this movie would be to skip to the last half-hour, specifically to the final hero-versus-dragon battle. When that's over, you can turn it off.