Dragonkeeper

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 like the movie Dragonkeeper because it is funny and heartfelt.

The storyline is about a slave girl called Ping (Mayalinee Griffiths), who dreams about meeting dragons. Her dream comes true, but one of the magical creatures dies and she goes on a quest to save the dragons and hatch the last imperial dragons' egg. Joining her is a dragon as her protector and a funny "very helpful" mouse. She soon finds out that she has mystical powers and learns to use them to stop bad guys who want to steal the egg and use its powers for evil.

I really enjoyed this film. It's an animated film with special effects. It Also has lots of humor - there are all sorts of humorous scenes like my favorite, where the mouse tries helping. He marches up to the big fight against something 2,000,000 times his size. Or when he rolls the egg away from the bad guys. The movie is also sad and heartfelt because one of the dragons dies. The visual effects are great and really stand out. For example when one of the dragons heals Ping's wound with the power of the egg as shown in the trailer. I do have to admit that some parts of the movie are a little childish. For example, There is a scene about 30 seconds long of two kids blowing raspberries at each other.

The film's message is "you can do whatever you want; only you decide your destiny."

I give Dragonkeeper 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 5 to 12. It opens in theaters on September 27, 2024. I hope you enjoy it. By Ariel K., KIDS FIRST!

With the emperor ailing in his capital, he sends out messengers to secure the one thing that can save him from certain death: the blood of a live dragon. Luckily for the few remaining dragons, though, there's a young girl "Ping" and her pet rat "Hua" who are determined to preserve their last egg and ensure that "Kai" is born in the sacred birthing pool safe and sound. It's quite good fun, this, and I always liked the Chinese depictions of dragons as rather more lithe and nimble then the grumpy, scarred and scaly Western interpretations, but otherwise this is a rather thinly padded out story that might better have tried to incorporate more from this six book series it's based on into it's plot to better build up the characters and fill out the plot. That said, it doesn't hang around and there's plenty of action as the youngster and the ancient dragon "Long Danzi" take on the whole Imperial army - and it's dastardly and scheming agent - whilst trying to preserve this fragile blue egg until it's ready to hatch. There's a gentle moral to the story about self reliance and the odd humorous moment too, and though it's probably not a film that the very young will really get much from, the animation is lively and colourful with some menacing bugs and fiery blue fisticuffs and it's worth a watch on the telly if you like the family fantasy genre.

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.