It starts off like a kids' version of 'Game Of Thrones' (deliberately so with a cameo from John Snow himself - Kit Harrington) and is pitched to a ridiculously apocalyptic level within the first ten minutes. It ends up as a bombardment of sound effects, CGI and nonsense.....just like every other kids film at the moment. It has nowhere to go, no rhythm, no build and although every element of the frame is filled with stuff happening it's all so repetitive and numbing and overblown that I just lost interest in it. Take any scene and you'd be hard pressed to know wether it was from the beginning, the middle, or the end. It's all the same. Overkill.
There was an outside chance I might have enjoyed it. There is some grimy production design that has you thinking that this could turn into a spaghetti western styled fantasy film. But there's no film grammar to hold it together so it just ends up looking like a particularly well rendered video game. It doesn't help that they seem to use the same lake/canyon location for....well, everything.
I have this theory that Jeff Bridges is never in a bad film. I'm now revisiting that theory. In this he's sort of playing it as Colonel Sanders with a voice like Father Abraham. No, I don't know why either. I suspect that he when he does the deep voice it was on the first few days of shooting and then when he does the mumbling voice it was when he'd given up on the script. Jeff Bridges, ladies and gentlemen. Jeff Bridges can't even save this. Also, I'd actually prefer to believe that Julianne Moore was only in it for the money over what is probably the actual truth: evil queen is probably the only role offered to actresses of this calibre nowadays.
Our leading man is someone called Ben Barnes. A piece of felt has more of a dynamic.
The studio could have called this 'Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie - Part 14' and no-one would have batted an eyelid. That's essentially what this movie is to me. It doesn't even have Jeremy Irons camping it up. It makes me think 'Hansel and Gretel:Witch Hunters' was maybe not such bad film after all. It's that bad.
There's a loyal but ugly character in this who has tusks. He's called Tusk. That's the level of invention on display here. Yeah.
It's based on the The Last Apprentice series of books by Joseph Delany. There's about fifteen of those things. Ker-ching!! But I'd be surprised if anyone can muster the energy to be involved in a sequel to this. It's currently in cinemas - but will probably be in the DVD remainder bin by the end of the week.
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