O Ataque do Gryphon

I am surprised that I haven't heard about any lawsuit yet against the filmmakers, I mean they even stole the Path of the Death from Lord of the Rings! I am sure this one ends up in my top 250 of worst movies, maybe even at number one. O gosh, I hardly have words to explain how bad this is.

Bad acting, bad script : I have seen bad movies, for sure, but this one is so bad that beside my laughs about stupidities and terrible visual effects I felt eternal regret for even buying the movie on DVD.... result, I dumped it in the garbage can, glad to have never ever watch this again.

I really won't recommend it to anyone at all. I would feel guilty forever, afraid of loosing my best movie pals.

After so many reviewers butchered the flick, I'm almost reluctant to say I think it's not all bad (voted 4/10). To start with, it's a C movie with cheap actors, cheap effects (the monster looks crap, no arguing about that), shot in the cheapest location they could find (Bulgaria or Romania, depending on whether you believe the opening titles or the ending titles). Obviously, it can't look like 'Bored of the Rings'. But under the production circumstances, it is acceptable. I liked the two kings who have personal difficulties to overcome their hatred for each other. They would rather not join forces to attack the wizard. Also the princess was cool because she always has blood or mud on her face, had to do the dirty work with sword in hand, not just look pretty, sit around and scream 'OMG, it's the monster' all the time like in the old days of C movies. Except for the visible problems due to low budget, some problems also lie within the script. The evil wizard seems terribly clichéd as a villain, while many things are poorly explained or not at all. There you go, it surely is somewhat silly, but OK to watch once.

I don't remember seeing a worse movie than Gryphon. This movie had it all : uninteresting summary, characters that didn't even bother to act decent in this so-called sci-fiction production, weak effects. I wasted 2 hours from my life watching this piece of crap. This movie finds his place at the bottom of the worst movies ever. Watching this film, I wanted to laugh because of its poor quality, but the movie couldn't even bring a smile on my desolated face. I can't stop wondering who can give this movie more than 1 star????? If you thing this garbage is worth more than 1 star, i recommend you to watch it again and you will certainly change your vote. I urge you not to watch this movie. 1/10.

What amazed me about this movie was the difference between the highs and the lows in it. Many of the locations were great. They picked some very nice places in Bulgaria to film some of the shots. The gryphon itself I thought was actually very good, but the way they put it into the picture was laughably bad. It was really, truly terrible. The plot was equally bad. Throw all the old fantasy clichés into a hat and just randomly draw 10 or so, and you'll get an idea of how bad the plot is. The acting also had highs and lows. Jonathan LaPaglia read his lines well - I bought his performance. Amber Benson, on the other hand, was terrible. Interestingly, it seemed like the decent performances were all by the "Delphites" (LaPaglia's character and his nation), and all of the "Locklanders" (Benson's character and her nation) were just the opposite.

Anyway, it was kind of fun to watch once my expectations were lowered to a reasonable level.

My goodness. I just finished watching this on the SciFi Channel, and it's everything I thought it would be. Everything about the gryphon, from concept design all the way up the pipeline to rendering & compositing, is sub-par. Everything about the story is asinine; it feels like the random result of a D&D match between the scriptwriters. Even the props and costumes are silly; the majestic Lance of Whatever the evil sorcerer spent the whole movie fondling looked like a claw hammer covered in gold leaf in several shots.

And the acting! Half the cast obviously drew inspiration for their roles by watching Lord of the Rings a few times, and the other half just didn't care. Evil Sorcerer Guy, for example -- I have never in my life seen a man so bored as that actor was in the final scene! He never did really attain the point of being an imposing presence. More than anything, he reminded me of one of the recurring characters on Food Network's Good Eats, so much so in fact I've been hunting around trying to see if it's the same actor.

All that said, it's good for watching on a Saturday night with a few buddies, especially if there's beer involved. If it had taken itself a little less seriously, it actually could've made for a really fun epic-film parody. In its current state, unfortunately, I can only recommend one viewing -- And that's if you're a fan of cheese-ball movies.