Ben says: Not as hyped up as ID4, but still the film on populist reviewers' lips at the moment, Dragonheart is a traditional swords and sorcery epic starring Dennis Quaid, Pete Postlethwaite (in a largely ineffectual role as a sidekick), Dina Meyer and the voice of Sean Connery as Draco the dragon, which for some reason, the Americans see fit to pronounce with a long flat 'a' - Dray-ko. The story itself is OK, but the direction is a little flat and the film sags badly at the start of the last third. The one comment I heard above all others is that people would have liked to have seen more of the dragon, but at $1m a minute, Draco wasn't likely to appear onscreen for much more than its 22 minutes.

Notwithstanding the flaws in direction and lack of pace, I did enjoy this movie. Even as just a voice, Sean Connery still manages to steal scenes from the actors that are physically present. I did like David Thewlis as the baddie, I think he presents an aura of sleaze that few other British actors seem to be able to bring up these days, with the result that most of them go for high camp villainy. I particularly like the laconic way that, when he finds his mother (Julie Christie, still looking gorgeous) has been plotting to kill him, he says, "how very unmotherly of you", in his flat Mancunian accent.

In short, a good film, but not a great one. ILM and Phil Tippet do a great job on the dragon, but costs were obviously cut, the score was the standard heroic anthem and the locations seemed a little muddled. Is this supposed to be England?

Ben gives it:

Fiona says: I definitely think we should have had more Sean Connery in this film. In fact why couldn't he actually be seen as well as heard? That's what I want to know. Anyway, apart from the fact that the cinema was warm and we went to see the film at a late afternoon performance so I was ready for a snooze, I thoroughly enjoyed this feature (for the most part).

One of the things that puzzled me was Dina Meyer's hair. The first time we saw her her hair was rather dirty and tangled but as the film progressed it became shinier and curlier until at the end she looked as though she had just walked out of her local forest branch of Vidal Sassoon! Now, as far as I am aware, hairdressing salons weren't around in the 11th century so how was this possible? And then there's David Thewlis' hair. Now, was he having a bad hair film or what? He was sporting a very nifty early pageboy cut from around 1971. Yum,yum!

Back to the film. The story had all the right ingredients, put together in the right order and although there is one sequence where Draco is flying over water casting a very crap reflection it was a fine attempt at a new fantasy story (we don't have enough dragon films today). Dennis Quaid was quite amusing as the dragon-slaying knight of the old order and Pete Postlethwaite transformed from strange and probably slightly mad, poetry writing holy person to sure-shot, whimsical holy person. This one is definitely a good one for children and any grown-ups who like a not too sloppy ending. That's all.

Fiona gives it:

last updated: 20th October 1996