Stay off this dragon ride
Dragon Rider (PG, 92 mins) Directed by Tomer Eshed Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★1⁄2
Hands up everyone who saw the poster or the trailer for Dragon Rider and thought: ‘‘Oh cool! They’ve made another How To Train Your Dragon sequel.’’
No? Just me then?
Maybe that explains my disappointment at this film. Because I truly did walk in to the cinema expecting a fourth instalment in that quite excellent franchise, only to find
Dragon Rider is based on a
1997 German novel which is something of a literary sensation with kids around the world.
So why then, if the producers of this film had such strong and popular source material to work with, did they choose to make
Dragon Rider into such a poor imitation of the How To franchise?
The character design of the dragons and the humans in Dragon Rider is near identical to the earlier films. Even the typeface on the poster of Dragon Rider is a steal from the How To marketing.
All of which sets up the comparison and then makes it tragically obvious just how inferior this film is to the Dreamworks product.
Ironically, if the makers hadn’t worked so hard to bring How to Train Your Dragon to mind, maybe we wouldn’t have quite noticed how stone-cold tedious, derivative and lacking in energy, wit and fun Dragon Rider can be.
The plot – teenage delinquent runs into girl and dragon who have been hiding out in a hidden valley – is sturdy and basic enough to hold any amount of fun and inventiveness.
But Dragon Rider squanders it all with a storyline straight out of Screenwriting 101. Apparently there is a mythical land where all dragons will be safe, if only the boy, the girl and the strangely fireless ‘‘Firedrake’’ can overcome a couple of baddies and learn a few life lessons first.
Well slap me with a warmed-over copy of Avatar and colour me disappointed to my very marrow, that these makers of children’s movies think the bar can still be set so low, when there is so much excellence out there for the nippers to choose from.
On the plus side, at least Patrick Stewart, Felicity Jones, Freddie Highmore and Thomas BrodieSangster all bring a little brio to their voice work. And, perhaps, a few of the visual effects and sequences aren’t entirely dreadful. But, mostly, Dragon Rider did what few films manage. It made me angry.
For so shamelessly trying to get a free ride on the reputation of far better films and then for failing to make any more than the most minimal effort to even be watchable, Dragon Rider is already one of my least liked films of 2021.
But, if you have any under-9s in your care over the holidays, they’ll probably think it’s just fine.