REIGN OF… STUPIDITY

A Film Review of "Reign of Fire"

Copyright 2002 Glenn Walker

Yep, CC stands for Closed-Captioning. That's the reason I can't wait for the video release of Reign of Fire because then I will finally know what these idiots are saying. The dialogue here is unintelligible, whether it's Christian Bale and all the extras speaking in a thick thick English accent or Matthew McConaughey mumbling incoherently there's no way to understand anything being said.

There are massive sequences of the film where the soundtrack (which is quite good, by the way, by Ed Shearmur) overwhelms the dialogue and where there is no music the players almost always speak over each other as if they're on "Jerry Springer" or "Maury Povich." The only person on screen you can understand is Izabella Scorupco who switches back and forth between an English accent and an American accent. Sheeesh.

Let's not even talk about the holes in the plot that you can drive an eighteen wheeler through or how the characters are so unlikable or how frigging dark (not dark in content, dark as in can't you losers afford spotlights?) the entire flick is. Let's talk about dragons. In a movie about dragons one should actually see some goddamn dragons! I don't care if you ran out of money for the CGI, use Muppets or animation or something! A movie about dragons should have dragons in it! I think we see more dragons in the TV ads than we do in the whole suffering hour and a half I was imprisoned in the theatre.

Don't see, don't see, don't see. Rent Dragonslayer if you want to see a good dragon flick. This Reign of Fire crap is enough to put me off going to the movies.

Rating *

***** Must see
**** Worth seeing
*** So you have eight dollars you want to throw away…
** Is Adam Sandler in this mess?
* A bullet would be quicker.

The above previously appeared at the defunct cinema site Project Popcorn.