Badmovies.org Forum

Review Packs are a collection of very short reviews, usually two or three at a time. My first Review Pack consists of the Star Wars/ Lord Of The Rings lovechild Eragon, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's raping of the beloved franchise Godzilla, and the Sci Fi Channel monster mash Minotaur, starring Tony Todd (Candyman)

Eragon
I've read Christopher Paolini's novel Eragon, and even though it was basically a poorly written LOTR fan fiction stretched to an outrageous length, I still enjoyed reading it. But of course, some Hollywood execs got their grimy hands on it, and transformed a decent novel into a complete mess of a movie. Basically what we have here is a crappy medieval Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is Eragon! Darth Vader is Durza the Shade! Obi-Wan Kenobi is Brom! So on and so forth. Pretty much everything here is bad. You'd think at least the effects would be good, but no, those are nothing more than so-so. Mild entertainment is the only real value here.
SCORE:  :smile: 1/2 out of five

Gdozilla (American Version)
True, this movie is a sick, twisted shadow of the real Godzilla films. The effects are great, but that's about all. The overgrown iguana here isn't Godzilla: It doesn't shoot nuclear fire from its mouth, it runs from the military, and in the end its killed in a way that would barely faze the real thing. But despite this, I don't have such venomous comments about this flick as many other people do. Sure, it doesn't deserve the title of Godzilla, but I still found it to be a rather entertaining giant monster movie, even if the monster was something of a wuss.
SCORE:  :smile:  :smile:  :smile: out of five

Minotaur
This movie, in my opinion, and probably in my opinion only, is one of the Sci Fi Channel's best originals. It has great effects (by Sci Fi standards at least), acting that at least doesn't make you want to beat your own head in with a hammer, an above-average script, and surprisingly competant direction. Best of all, Tony Todd, of the Candyman series, is in it! Really the only gripe I have about the movie is that its poorly edited. There are two scenes when the wires holding actors up are clearly visible, and those could've easily been edited out. Other than that, I give Minotaur my full approval.
SCORE:  :smile:  :smile:  :smile: 1/2 out of five

I completely agree with you on Eragon.  What a mess of a movie, and such a shame because the book was so good.  My kids wouldn't even sit through it.

But I think you're being way too generous about Minotaur.  Granted, it might have had better production values for anything from Sci-Fi, but the acting, script, and plot were abysmal.

And as for Godzilla (1998), my 5 yr old summed it up best: "What the hell is that supposed to be?  It looks like an iguana that has chicken legs, no powers, it's stupid and this movie sucks!"
(Yes, she really said that.  I was laughing to hard to reprimand her language.)

I have maintained for a long time that "Deanzilla" is actually a remake of "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms."  When you take it as such, it becomes much easier to accept the film.  I just wish that they had taken some cues from the old monster b-movies and kept the running time to 90 minutes or less.

The scenes of the giant iguana being chased through the streets of New York, it swimming in the harbor as the submarine fires torpedoes at it, and it crashing through the suspension bridge are all quite satisfying.  Too bad that they had to throw in a completely annoying raptor rip-off section (thank you, "Jurassic Park") and the exceptionally long human plot.

Meh, I just have a soft spot for dumb movies like that. I was really just comparing it to some of the other crap the Sci Fi Channel has inflicted upon us.

After I posted, I thought about it for awhile, and Minotaur was better than, say, Lake Placid II, which I was hoping would at least be entertaining!  I think it was the setting of Minotaur that made me dislike it so much.