Dragonkeeper

Ping is an orphan girl living with a servant woman tasked with feeding the "Honored Guests" living under her master's care. The "Honored Guests" are actually the last two imperial dragons along with their unhatched egg.

Ping learns that she has the power to control qi or chi which makes her a dragon keeper and she is destined to be the person to take the last remaining egg to a special birthing pool to hatch. To achieve this goal she will need the help of her dragon friend, Danzi, and her mouse friend, Hua Hua, to retrieve the stolen egg.

Ping will have to overcome the sickly Emperor, who wants the egg's qi to heal his illness, and the evil necromancer, Diao, who wants to steal the egg's qi to become an immortal god.

I enjoyed this film very much although I did think that some of the subject matter might be confusing to a child. It's beautifully animated but it was lacking a little something that I just can't put my finger on. My biggest complaint is that it simply didn't feel complete. The film seemed to leave a lot of questions unanswered and feels as though there must be a sequel in the works but I couldn't confirm my suspicion.

Glad I came across it and I hope they are planning to make a sequel simply because I feel there should be more to Ping, Danzi, Hua Hua and Kai's story. I would definitely watch it.

Giving this an 8/10 rating

First off, try and watch the sub version which is Chinese, then the UK English dub, which I saw, has very good voice acting, with Bill Nighy and others, then you will have fun with this. I had a fun time with this Chinese/Spanish production about ancient China, dragons and Necromancers, and lots of magic.

It does look really colourful on a the big cinema screen, where I saw it, and the kids in the audience, here in London, did like it. I see low ratings because of the horrid American dub I fear, so I guess we got it lucky with our English dub, which really is good. The look really is Chinese for sure, and the main lead- the little girl named 'Ping' was to me, likeable more and more, once it got further into the film.

The themes are quite dark in places, but the dragons are great, and the style is good on the eye, some good humor too. I sat down and let it the beautiful visuals take me away. The version I watched was very wide, so there maybe an IMAX of this floating about. But really, watch the trailer of this first. But I paid my money, and liked what I watched.

I feel this film doesn't deserve to be shot down. I liked the story, the characters are a bit childish, but I enjoyed the voice acting, the animation was good

As I said, while I'm no professional reviewer, I'm a fan of well made animation, the soundtrack seemed to be in sync enough not to give me any discomfort. The artwork was well drawn and an enjoyable watch.

Over all a nice looking film to comfortably pass sometime and definitely not a waste of effort.

(Why is there such a high character count required in a review. I makes writing a review quite an effort, especially as I've got dyslexia.)

I put this on for my son who is 5, it was immediately obvious that this was re dubbed from a Chinese version. Some if the voice acting is awful, with voices nowhere near matching the physical look of the characters. That said you can live with tha, and my son surely would never notice it.

But what bothered me most was how dark the whole tone of the movie was. My kid asked me why everything was dying and absolutely nothing positive or uplifting happens until the very end of the film.

Children's films are becoming increasingly dark these days and that probably reflects society. I've a feeling Dragonkeeper is reflecting current Chinese society. But with themes like slavery, bullying and murder, I probably wouldn't have let my kid watch this had I known.

I also believe there's something that's lost in translation with this movie, but somebody cleverer than I can analyse that.

Dragonkeeper is an adaptation of the books of the same name by. Carole Wilkinson, specifically the first novel. While the overall tone is lighter than the book, it was written by the author herself, so any flawws in the story are within her purview.

The story takes place in an Ancient China where dragons have been hunted to near extinction and where a chosen one can wield chi powers. The latter is kind of a gross misinterpretation of chi seen also in Mulan 2020, but for the most part the movie is accurate to chinese dragon lore, associating them with water.

Personality wise, the characters very very archetypical. There are some missed opportunities; the villain, for example, has a sympathetic scene setting his motivation, but devolves in a card carrying bad guy for the rest of the film. Not a lot of complexity to be seen here.

Overall, if you want a Wuxia fix, this movie will deliver half-way.