Galgameth: L'apprenti dragon (1996) Online

Considering that I watched this after Dragonheart, I found this still quite refreshing the way dragon stories go. Seems like in these days, not all dragons are evil and deserve to be slayed, but there will always be at least one which becomes a hero dragon. Same here. A young prince discovers the family dragon, which although was like a toy at the beginning of the story, finally grows to become a behemoth that helps the prince win his kingdom and people. Devin Oatway (an unknown to me) is quite a character as the prince, although young, managing to put across a performance worthy of the film's 8 stars. A nice family show to watch beside the fire.

THE BAD: Terrible dialog, lousy direction, crumby acting (with the exception of Stephen Macht) and a dragon that looked like a cross between a ninja turtle and ET.

THE GOOD: Great costumes, good sets and surprisingly well done special effects (compared to the quality of the rest of the movie).

Had I been watching this movie by myself I would have most certainly turned it off after about 15 minutes, but my kids (both under 10) liked the "cute" little creature and so enjoyed the film. If you've got young kids they'll probably enjoy it too but if you're looking for an entertaining film that stands on its own merits then I would stay far, far away from this film.

Okay, let's get the bad out of the way first -- the film's effects budget was very obviously blown entirely on effects relating to Galgameth, and they don't even have convincing prop swords. Acting is all over the place, from some fairly decent performances to the goofy. The plot is fairly simple and straightforward.

Now the good. The writing is actually fairly good, with a surprisingly engaging story and characters you can care about, even if they're not terribly deep. Galgameth is nicely rendered and fun to watch in action, and the movie is enjoyably goofy if you're not trying to take it seriously. I honestly recommend it, despite the flaws.

This movie is lame. I don't even think that I would say that I would let my kids watch it because I think that they would get bored. The only thing worth while are the pyrotechnics, and I can only assume that they spent way too much on them since the rest of the movie is so terrible. A story about a family having their own dragon? And I mean really, how could the prince be dumb enough to not know that the bad guys was ruling like an jerk in his name? And generally I'm all into girl power movies, but seriously, that chick has absolutely no idea what she's doing with the sword and she's supposed to teach the prince? I will give one praise to this movie, the best line in the whole movie is as follows: "The boy lost his mind when his monster died." I would strongly suggest not seeing this movie... ever. It is a total waste of time, and hopefully it will never have a sequel!

Oh yeah - and it's super lame that they call the dragon "Galgi" - BARF!