Dragonkeeper

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 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.

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.

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.