This "Lord of the rings" rip-off by mockbuster master The Asylum is a lot better than it deserves to be.Daniel Bonjour, obviously cast because he looks a lot like Frodo, plays Arkadi, a youthful adventurer who must collect a number of jewels which, when placed into an amulet that looks like it was bought at Claire's Boutique for $10.95, will for unexplained reasons give him the power to save the world from the evil of a wizard named Kirill, played by Not Ron Perlman.He's aided in his quest by two warriors: Katya, whose porn star makeup and lip gloss perfectly match her porn star acting talents, and Maxim, played by ungracefully aging Marc "Beastmaster" Singer, whom the director unwisely required to act like the child of an unholy union between Yoda and Popeye.Between the opening scenes of Not Frodo peeping at a hottie villager taking her clothes off for no good reason (Note: you don't even get a peek; don't even bother pausing or backtracking the DVD like I did) and the anticlimactic final battle between Not Frodo and Not Ron Perlman, there's in fact a charming little fantasy story going on, with some pretty location shooting and nice b-roll over mountain vistas and lush forests.The dragons are actually pretty neat looking, even though all they really do is fly around and shake their heads back and forth.All in all, "Dragonquest" comes off as a bunch of renfaire friends who got together and made their own fantasy movie, with some bargain basement CGI spliced in. On that level, it's a pleasant enough bit of fun.Don't pay full price for it; that would just be foolish. But I've seen it on Amazon for about three bucks new, paired on the same DVD with the equally workmanlike Asylum effort "Merlin: War of the Dragons." That's how to buy your bad movies, folks. Get 'em cheap, watch 'em once, sell 'em for a profit at your next garage sale."Dragonquest" isn't worth anything more than that, and doesn't aspire to be.

In short: Cliché story, zero character development, horrible acting, abysmal special effects, cheesy script, bad choreography, bad everything, everything, EVERYTHING.Okay, onto the specifics: First, the story. A poor farm boy (apparently orphaned) is thrown into a quest to find a set of magical stones to help defeat a big bad dragon and overthrow an evil wizard. Along the way he meets Arse-Kicking Action Girl and Wizened Old Mentor. Wizened Old Mentor ends up dying, Maybe Orphaned Farm Boy and Arse-Kicking Action Girl hook up (for no apparent reason). If it seems like there's less than zero originality there, it's because that's exactly what the film is like. Clichés can work if done right - this does not.Character development. By the end of the film, we still know absolutely nothing about the main character, or his two sidekicks. Hell, we barely know anything about the villain. And that's not even beginning on the random characters that just sort of appear for a scene or two then vanish without a trace, of which there are many.And then we get to the acting. I couldn't tell if the actor playing Maxim (Wizened Old Mentor) was intentionally trying to portray the character's eccentric-ness or something, but the amount of overacting was shocking, making me laugh even during the most dramatic of moments. And it wasn't limited to him, either. No one seemed to fit their role well, save a select few.The special effects are, quite simply, the worst I've ever seen in a movie, EVER. They make the old Godzilla movies look like Lord of the Rings. Every time the dragon appeared, I couldn't help but hear it say "I'm definitely NOT CGI". And during the war between two armies near the beginning (which, curiously, is never mentioned again...hmmm...)...this isn't even Photoshop, it's MSPaint.As a massive fan of anything dragon-related, it's been so long since I've seen a decent dragon movie. The last one I can remember was DragonHeart, released way back in 1997 (and it says something about this 2009 film when a movie twelve years ago was able to craft a realistic looking dragon who I could believe was actually up there on set with the actors, whereas this can't even make a convincing spear-through-body effect). As such, I so badly wanted to like this, I really wanted it to be something special. As it is though, it's so bad it's terrible. One to avoid at all costs.

That was the funniest movie I have ever seen and it wasn't even meant to be funny. I could not take Maxim(or whatever his name is) seriously. His face looked so silly, even when he was trying to be totally serious. They tried much too hard to be dramatic, especially during Maxim's death. And the movie was very random. The guy walks into a cave, a spider comes up and does a little dance thing, and then it walks away, and the whole time the boy is just standing there looking at it. I mean, wouldn't the spider at least attack him? Or wouldn't he try to get away from it? And then he just finds one of the gems in a helmet on the floor without even doing anything to obtain it. Over all it was hard to take seriously, had bad graphics, failed horribly at the green screen, had bad actors, and a terribly predictable plot. If you are planning on getting it for a fantasy or adventure movie, don't. If you are looking for a comedy, this is the one to choose.

Just want to say, if you're pondering whether or not you want to see this movie, do not... Just, do not see this film.I will sum it up for you here: Badly directed acting, terrible cgi animations, the fight scenes seem like they're made by someone who has no clue what he was doing, laughably easy challenges with obvious, plain stupid or silly solutions, no character development. I feel bad for the actors who appeared in this nightmare and I hope that this, bad though it is, gives them the break to do something better later on.I wanted to like this movie, since it's been a while since the last descent fantasy movie, but I couldn't.