Enjoy your post-Christmas present.
It occurs to me that perhaps my celebration of the
season that I put out on Christmas Eve was a bit darker than the season usually
calls for. Forgive me for being a bit sardonic but in the spirit of the
Holidays, I decided to think of others before myself, preferring to leave you
all with movies what would actually be entertaining.
A Christmas night wasted watching “The Christmas
Dragon” is just about the worst gift you could possibly ask for out of 2015. I
should know. I was its recipient.
The story of “The Christmas Dragon” is a tale as old
as the dvd market itself. Not the story of a group of misfit orphans
befriending a monster that gets them involved in an adventure to save and
celebrate the spirit of a holiday for the people around them. Rather, the story
of an interesting premise shoved off to the side in favor of a mundane romp
through the stereotypical faire of formulaic storytelling for a demographic.
In doing the slightest bit of research on the film,
you may notice immediately that it is unmistakably a children’s film. What I
underestimated is just how much of a modern children’s film it would be.
While the occasional highlight rears its head
through the bizarre camera work on dragon attacks, the laughable editing of
Santa Clause’s reactions to certain events and a bizarrely out of place human/elf
romance between actors Jake Stormoen and Melanie Stone that makes them seem
more like understudies for Tauriel and Kili from “The Hobbit,” the film is
unfortunately the worst kind of direct to video release to come across:
standard.
“The Christmas Dragon” comes across more as a
Hallmark channel original movie than a passion project that didn’t have the
resources for a grander release.
The juvenile antics of the orphans and their
undirected accents comprise of the bulk of the film, clearly meant more to
identify with young kids than set up the grand adventure that it goes on about.
This becomes especially evident when the most
damning reality of the film begins to sink in; the titular Christmas Dragon
doesn’t show up until about the 70% mark of runtime and has a screen presence
of less than 25 minutes in an hour and 40 minute long film.
Inconsistencies
like these tend to get on my nerves under ordinary circumstances in which
marketers probably attempt to push the film for what it may not be trying to
be. It irritates me even more however to know that this is the result of a Kickstarter
campaign that pushed the film under this title.
What we’re left with is unfortunately a bland but
unremarkably competent kid’s flick that attracts attention by virtue of false
advertising.
One Shatner out of Four
Final Verdict: The only joy that “The Christmas Dragon” successfully spreads is the blues of holiday disappointment.
"the titular Christmas Dragon doesn’t show up until about the 70% mark of runtime "
ReplyDeleteSo like Godzilla, only 1000 times less awesome.
More like Godzilla, if Godzilla was about a hurricane and then just happened to have a 2 minute clip of a giant lizard that didn't do anything in the last half hour and was never substantially referenced.
DeleteThe concept of Dragons is such an afterthought to this movie that the title must have been conceived of as a scam