Moi, Arthur, 12 ans, chasseur de dragons

Looked this movie up before watching it with my family. Rotten Tomatoes showed it having a 60% fresh rating. I looked no further and turned this horrible mess on. The basic story was fine for a children/family movie. But wow, the acting, the sets, the CGI, and the plot holes killed this through and through. Then I went back to Rotten Tomatoes and found that there were only 5 Critic ratings. Meaning only 3 out of 5 had to give if a fresh rating. And there it was. The 3 fresh ratings were for a documentary with a similar name about skateboarding with no text. The 2 real ratings were nasty. They told it how it was. Then, the viewer ratings were 16% out of over 300. Now we are getting more realistic. This movie is the type of movie that you torture people with, the kind of movie that turns the youth of America into zombies for sub mediocrity.

OK, so it ain't 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'... Heck, it isn't even 'How to Train Your Dragon' or 'Monster House'!...

What it is, however, despite the awful CGI and campy production (which may actually be a "plus")... This movie is just plain fun for children or any adult who ever played a "Trading Card" game in a previous life.

(I actually was not one of them) ...or any other adult who can suspend dis-believability for the sake of their geek-children.

'Kids, these days! :-)

IMDb requires the following lines to be a 'Legitimate' posting: "Why does IMDb" "Require me to post 10 lines of text" "When I thought I had adequetly reviewed this movie" "In less...?"

A group of kids is running through the secret basement of their middle school, trying to escape a fire-breathing dragon.

Wait, let's back up ...

Arthur, Tim and Natalie are the Knights of the Square Table. They take their fantasy card game way too seriously, but it turns out someone needs to.

Arthur's parents have split up and it's all poor Laura can do to raise him on her own. Arthur's father is now with Officer Annie, who wants very much to be Arthur's mom.

Vice-Principal Metz lets her son Larry get away with bullying Arthur. If Larry did something wrong, it must have been Arthur's fault. So Arthur gets suspended and Laura gets lectured on her inadequate mothering skills.

It's not Laura's fault that Arthur keeps sneaking out and engaging in risky behavior with his friends, including running through the sewers.

But something is definitely going on. Carpet cleaners in Arthur's neighborhood need Hazmat suits. And Arthur and his friends find a blue troll named Bart who talks like Jar-Jar Binks.

That isn't all. Besides Bart, there is someone else who is trying to bring back the evil dragon leader Darksmoke. To get help, the kids go to a convention where Shane, the creator of the fantasy card series, is signing autographs.

At first Shane dismisses the kids as wackos, but he is finally convinced the cards he created are based on reality. There is a reason for this, as he figures out later.

Can Shane and the kids save the world? And will Shane end up with Laura? I think they like each other.

This movie should not be taken too seriously. It's just a live-action cartoon with plenty of laughs, although Wendie Malick does a very good job as the over-the-top tyrant of a vice-principal. Lea Thompson seems frustrated but has her moments.

Bart is adorable in a creepy way.

These kids are brilliant, claiming to be designing a project for the school science fair. But it's much more than that. While the script may not show much intelligence, the kids sure seem to.

The dragon is genuinely scary. This is a family movie but not really for younger kids. And it does have the obligatory potty humor. Violence is mostly cartoonish, but one scene is pretty upsetting.

I'm Wendie Malick's age so you know the so-called music wasn't intended for my generation.

If you're a kid, you'll probably like it.

I am sorry, but this movie is the worst fantasy film ever made. The acting was horrible and the story was so poor that no wonder the dialog was pure torture. I was expecting to be at the least, entertained, and at the most, to be involved. I was neither. The characters were not believable, nor was the plot. Teens will find this laughable. Even young children will be bored. It is unfortunate that it seems that most of the money was spent on very poor special effects. A true disappointment.

The one highlight of the film is the music. At least it was entertaining.

I do not recommend this film to anyone. A total waste of time.

I picked this up for two dollars out of a bargain bin at the dollar store, and it was worth every penny. This movie is fairly generic and harmless, with one dimensional characters and a predictable plot. If this had a larger budget, it would have been far less entertaining. To start with, it seems like the film has three sets - a local school, somebody's house, and an abandoned building (? Whatever it is, it definitely isn't the sewer it's supposed to be). They also didn't seem to like multiple takes, as the camera is wobbly in spots and the footage sometimes inexplicably sped up. The most memorable thing about this movie (other than its terrible, addicting theme song) is the cgi. They obviously put effort into the creatures, as they don't look half bad, but they fail miserably at everything else (walls don't break into cubes, and don't get me started on the opening credits). All in all, the movie is harmless. I wouldn't particularly recommend it as anything but a time passer. It should entertain kids. It certainly entertained my friends and I, and we're a group of twenty somethings that hunt for bad movies. By no means was this the worst thing I've seen.