Eragon is based on Christopher Paolini's popular book of the same name. The sadly unoriginal plot revolves around an ordinary farmboy, Eragon, who comes into possession of a dragon's egg. Not surprisingly, there is an evil king who rules the land, a gorgeous elf who rather resembles Liv Tyler as Arwen, a mentor who dies after teaching Eragon remarkably little (although Eragon conveniently displays skills he never learned later on), and a band of rebels hiding in the mountains.

Fans of Paolini's novel are likely to find this incarnation disappointing. Like many other books that are turned into movies, Eragon veers away from the original noticeably. A lot of material has been left out entirely, while other parts of the story are trimmed down to mere footnotes. Most notably, Eragon's cousin Roran and Angela the witch--vital secondary characters in the novel--barely appear in the film. Roran in particular is the spearhead of an entire subplot that the filmmakers do not even hint at. In addition, what hasn't been deleted has often been changed, including the circumstances surrounding the death of Eragon's mentor Brom and the climactic battle at the end. In the book, the battle ends with Eragon and his dragon Saphira crashing through a gigantic stained glass window made entirely of sapphire--perhaps a bit cheesy, but it would have looked fantastic on-screen. Somehow, the cinematic potential of that imagery escaped the screenwriter, and instead Saphira crashes into the ground (ho-hum), and we get a horribly sappy scene where Eragon tries to save her life. Changes and cuts like this are something I have come to expect from movie adaptations, but they surely disappointed the young audience members who make up a large percentage of Eragon's fan base.

Much worse, and more unforgivable, is the movie's sloppiness. The editing is atrocious, particularly in the beginning when a bunch of very brief scenes are shoved in one after the other in such quick succession that it jars the senses. Things improve after Eragon leaves the village with Brom, but there remain a number of scenes throughout the movie that end abruptly or dramatically interrupt the movie's flow.

The dialogue suffers as well. Characters state the obvious or spout such painfully bad statements as, "I suffer without my stone." And who can forget "Into the sky to win or die," an utterly inane rhyme that detracts from an otherwise serious moment? You also get the sense that the screenwriter had a very hard time coming up with any dialogue because so much of it is redundant. Brom gives a speech about the Dragon Riders that echoes the opening narration so closely you have to wonder why they bothered to put it in. In the second half of the movie, there are enough lines repeated from the first half to elicit eye-rolling and exclamations of disgust. Even the lines that seem like they should be pretty good ("Poor Durza, how will you tell the king you failed?") come out sounding as lame as the poorly written lines.

The costumes, too, can be appalling. Angela is covered head-to-toe in a ridiculous amount of gold despite her squalid environment. Both the rebel leader and his daughter wear gaudy headdresses into battle, and Eragon's armor is obviously designed to look cool rather than realistic.

The filmmakers also toss in some truly ludicrous elements. In the novel, Saphira grows to adulthood quickly but gradually over a set period of time. In the movie, she transforms from baby to full-grown dragon in the course of a single two-minute flight full of lightning flashes. Kids may not be ready to sit still for an extra hour watching Saphira grow up more realistically, but the filmmakers could have easily suggested the passing of several months or even years with a few minutes of carefully edited, short scenes. And when the elf Arya is captured by the king's evil minion Durza, we see undergoing torture on a stone slab while decked out in perfectly arranged clothing, an artistic flair that shrieks of contrivance. It's even more ridiculous than all those movies where a person on their deathbed has great hair and makeup.

Worst of all is the sloppy handling of the story itself. Plot elements are dropped for long periods of time, only to be picked up again when it's convenient. Durza sends assassins called the Razak after Eragon, but we see them only intermittently so that they hardly seem a threat until the scene where Brom and Eragon kill them. Durza sends more minions, Urgal warriors, to kill Eragon--and again, we barely see them until, suddenly . . . oh my gosh! There are hundreds of them popping out of nowhere just as Eragon reaches the rebels' mountain hideaway!!! And although Brom tells Eragon that Durza can only be killed by piercing his heart, no one ever explains that "killing" Durza in any other way makes him more powerful (and weirder-looking), leaving anyone who has not read the book very confused. Furthermore, while good modern storytelling avoids the use of a deus ex machina, this film contains two such plot devices within sixty seconds. (Watch for the scene where Eragon is trying to escape from Durza's fortress with Arya.)

At some point, one becomes convinced the filmmakers were trying to make a bad movie. They even make the rather obvious mistake of trying to pass the icon of a griffin off as a dragon. And if John Malkovich as King Galbatorix isn't the blandest, most impotent and non-threatening villain in cinema history, then Darth Vader is as cuddly as the Easter Bunny. You even get the sense that the filmmakers are openly mocking Paolini. If the novel is a blatant rip-off of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, the movie practically shrieks "plagiarism." My husband and I spent the entire movie quoting lines from Star Wars to each other in the numerous scenes where they fit so well. Of course, much of the movie's similarity to other sagas is the fault of the source material, not the movie itself. But the plagiarism is taken to new and wholly unnecessary levels by the filmmaker's choice to copy specific images and lines of dialogue from other movies. For example, the opening narration is reminiscent of the prelude to Fellowship of the Ring. Lines like "You're the Varden's only hope," and "A young rider named Galbatorix betrayed them" echo Star Wars so strongly that it can't be coincidence. The scene where Eragon and Roran play-fight seems ripped right out of Pirates of the Caribbean, down to the very set used. When Durza poisons Arya, her wound is identical to the one Frodo receives on Weathertop in Fellowship. And again, when Durza is looking down on Galbatorix's army, it is so similar to Saruman giving orders to the Uru Khai for the Battle at Helm's Deep that you can almost hear Chrisopher Lee's voice saying, "There will be no dawn for men."

When all is said and done, the best you can expect from Eragon is a pretty good soundtrack and a scavenger hunt for all the pieces it clumsily collects from other films.