Upon Drizzt's recommendation, I watched this despite the many bad reviews that came out upon its release. It was better than I would have expected after all the reviews. Though not perfect, it was a lot of fun.

Falling squarely into classic adventure quest genre, it involves a group of heroic beings of various types banding together to seek $ARTIFACT in an effert to save the world from a horrible fate. Along the way, they encounter many obstacles, characters, and places.

The heightened visual style was very cool. Some really elaborat sets, and also nice CG shots (though obviously CG, they still looked cool, and added to the fantasy feel).

Jeremy Irons was way cool as the nasty arch villian. Perfect for the role. Zoe McLellan, who played the mage, could easily pass as a Winona Rider clone, at least in terms of facial features and expressions.

The movie's was really fun up until about the last 15 minutes. Toward the end, it degenerated into a rather generic hero duels villian on top of the high tower scenario, where they do a lot of making faces, posturing, and shouting about each other's defeat. How many times have we seen that before?

According to Drizzt, much of movie game follows the Dungeons & Dragons rules, and so would be enjoyable from the perspective of someone who has played it (moreso than a general movie critic who know nothing about the game). Even though I haven't really ever played the game, I found the movie fun (it probably didn't hurt that he explained some of the less obvious stuff that would have gone unnoticed otherwise).

Worth seeing. A worthy film of the fantasy genre.