Homage to Fromage: Age of the Dragons
Another Saturday night, another SyFy original movie. This past weekend it was Age of the Dragons starring Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones. One has to wonder how these guys get roped into these kinds of films, but sometimes it’s best not to ask. This is the fourth Homage to Fromage column, and I have to admit, this was the worst one so far.
I almost feel guilty for saying it, because I really like both of those actors. But sometimes negative things just need to be said. This movie was painful. Not in a good way like Ice Road Terror or Piranha 3D. More like…..Howard the Duck painful. In case you aren’t familiar with it, I’ll run it down for you.
Age of the Dragons is a rip on Moby Dick. The characters are the same, except this time there’s a hot chick thrown into the mix for good measure. Oh and instead of the great white whale….it’s a great white dragon. This story is set in a mythical fantasy land where the great white dragon disfigured Ahab when he was a young boy, and adding insult to injury, killed his sister. He spends his life hunting dragons, mainly for their vitriol that is used for fuel, but also in hopes of finding this evil creature.
Along for the ride is the hot-shot but tender at heart harpooner, Ishmael and his sidekick Queequeg, who join the crew thinking they will slay dragons and make loads of money. They have another thing coming when they realize that Ahab’s game is revenge. His obsession is ultimately his and his crew’s undoing.
I’m all for the cheesy, so-bad-they’re-good movies, but I have to draw the line at so-bad-they’re-wretched movies. Normally I can find something, anything redeeming about a film, but I’m having a really really hard time with this one. The acting is so over the top, they must have served nothing but ham and cheese at the craft services table. It’s like someone told Danny Glover to just go ballistic and over the top with the role, because he hammed it up so much, I cringed. That’s right. From the start, I winced and thought “Oh Lord….I’m in trouble here.” After the opening sequence, it just got worse.
I expected the visuals of the dragons to be really bad, but surprisingly they weren’t dreadful. Well look there, something positive! Honestly the movie’s major offense wasn’t so much that it was bad. No siree, this movie is boredom’s worst offender. I didn’t care about the characters, I didn’t care about the story. My ears perked up a little in the beginning when the dragon deep-fried Ahab’s sister, but to be honest with you, I was kind of rooting for the dragon the whole time. Especially when Ahab sent Ishmael, Rachel and Queequeg (I can’t help but think of Scully’s dog from X-Files) into a dragon’s lair (if only this film were as cool as that game was) to kill them while they slept. That’s just rude.
Thank goodness I DVR’d this one and was able to skip through the commercials. While the movie played I found myself so disinterested that I tried to anything and everything to stay busy and not fall asleep. When you’re more involved with your Words With Friends game than you are the movie you’re watching, something’s wrong.
I don’t mind the melding of fantasy with a literary classic. I thought it would be an interesting take on a story that’s been done a thousand times. It could have been fresh and exciting. Instead we were given a stale tale with broken promises of steam-punk fantasy. In the end I felt none of the steam but instead, felt like I got punked.
I really hope the next one is better. The week of August 14th will bring the next Homage to Fromage on a movie titled Doomsday Prophecy. It’s apparently about a book that predicts geographical disasters that wreak havoc on the planet. I’m already sold!
If you’d like to see for yourself just how bad Age of the Dragons was, check out the trailer below.
Tags: Age of the Dragons, bad movies, Danny Glover, SyFy, Vinnie Jones
