Dragonquest

I was thrilled when I stumbled upon "Dragonquest" and saw that Marc Singer starred in a sword and sorcery fantasy movie. But my thrill was cut brutally short when I saw that it was a movie by The Asylum and that Brian Thompson was portraying the villain.

And true to the mockbuster legacy that The Asylum is known for, then "Dragonquest" is one another such countless titles spewed out by the intrepid machinery at The Asylum. "Dragonquest" is a blatant rip off of the Tolkien fantasy classic, just instead of a ring then it is a pendant.

As much as I wanted to like or enjoy this movie given my lifelong romance with fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons, then "Dragonquest" was a poor movie with very Little entertainment value.

The characters were one-dimensional and had the personalities of wet cardboard cutouts. And most laughable of all was the Maxim character; whom was a mutated hybrid between Yoda and Popeye, it was such a blemish on Marc Singer's usual performance.

As with just about every other movie spewed forth from The Asylum, then the special effects were laughable and looked like something straight out of an 1980's movie.

And the final confrontation between Arkadi (who looks awfully much like Frodo) and Kirill (the villain) was utterly anti-climatic and rushed.

If you enjoy fantasy movies, do yourself a favor and stay well clear of this one.

Hilarious. I laughed through most of the first half. Things improved after that, once I changed the channel...

It's a little like Hotshots meets Lord of the Rings. You have the makings of an epic fantasy film, with what felt like the world's worst scripting, but pulled off in such a bad manner, it may as well have been branded a spoof.

The bad points include: The script, the special effects (check out the fight scenes!), the acting (for the most part), the choreography, the directing, several of the outfits... the list goes on.

The good points include: Erm... hmm.... Well it was a bit funny anyway.

Just want to say, if you're pondering whether or not you want to see this movie, do not... Just, do not see this film.

I will sum it up for you here: Badly directed acting, terrible cgi animations, the fight scenes seem like they're made by someone who has no clue what he was doing, laughably easy challenges with obvious, plain stupid or silly solutions, no character development. I feel bad for the actors who appeared in this nightmare and I hope that this, bad though it is, gives them the break to do something better later on.

I wanted to like this movie, since it's been a while since the last descent fantasy movie, but I couldn't.

This "Lord of the rings" rip-off by mockbuster master The Asylum is a lot better than it deserves to be.

Daniel Bonjour, obviously cast because he looks a lot like Frodo, plays Arkadi, a youthful adventurer who must collect a number of jewels which, when placed into an amulet that looks like it was bought at Claire's Boutique for $10.95, will for unexplained reasons give him the power to save the world from the evil of a wizard named Kirill, played by Not Ron Perlman.

He's aided in his quest by two warriors: Katya, whose porn star makeup and lip gloss perfectly match her porn star acting talents, and Maxim, played by ungracefully aging Marc "Beastmaster" Singer, whom the director unwisely required to act like the child of an unholy union between Yoda and Popeye.

Between the opening scenes of Not Frodo peeping at a hottie villager taking her clothes off for no good reason (Note: you don't even get a peek; don't even bother pausing or backtracking the DVD like I did) and the anticlimactic final battle between Not Frodo and Not Ron Perlman, there's in fact a charming little fantasy story going on, with some pretty location shooting and nice b-roll over mountain vistas and lush forests.

The dragons are actually pretty neat looking, even though all they really do is fly around and shake their heads back and forth.

All in all, "Dragonquest" comes off as a bunch of renfaire friends who got together and made their own fantasy movie, with some bargain basement CGI spliced in. On that level, it's a pleasant enough bit of fun.

Don't pay full price for it; that would just be foolish. But I've seen it on Amazon for about three bucks new, paired on the same DVD with the equally workmanlike Asylum effort "Merlin: War of the Dragons." That's how to buy your bad movies, folks. Get 'em cheap, watch 'em once, sell 'em for a profit at your next garage sale.

"Dragonquest" isn't worth anything more than that, and doesn't aspire to be.

Marc Singer, hero of the legendary movie Beastmaster, is back with more of the same. The only difference is that this movie appeared to be made 20 something years before the Beastmaster instead of 20 something years after.

I react the same negative way as many others reacted, but maybe I have some alternate views. Maybe I think that the actors and the writers were paid for the amount of words that were used. Almost none, so sticking to a low budget must not have been a problem. There were a couple of facial expressions though, as thoughtful as from a b-rated soap opera. For sure nothing was spent on special effects on neither dragons nor quests, so I guess it all went to the outfits or to the appearance of the characters. A few rags here and there, a few piles of mud to roll into before playing your part, that must have been expensive.

Was there a lack of character development? I think they rather developed really well from single cell organisms to two-footed Neanderthals.

Of course, if all else fails, you have naked women and fierce fights. Wait, they didn't have naked women (almost though, in the beginning, but that should have been warning that it wasn't going to happen). And they didn't have fierce fights. Well, nothing that my dead grandfather couldn't have won. You should enjoy the abilities of the army (I mean the five soldiers) during the final fight.

A negative experience, for sure. I'm sorry for anyone who spent money on this. My advice, take your copy of Beastmaster from under the dust.