You don’t fool me, movie. Whether you want to be called Firedrake: The Silver Dragon (as I saw it on Netflix) or Dragon Rider, you’re still a pretty lame movie. And why the title change anyway? I guess Dragon Rider is the name of the original book but did some marketing genius think that titled wouldn’t interest kids… but Firedrake would? I think we can agree that the word “dragon” has a certain appeal.
Certainly enough appeal to foolishly crib from How To Train Your Dragon… though only in the design of the human character and the simple fact there are dragons and they are ridden. And, you know, the foolishly audacious appearance of a How to Tame Your Dragon movie poster in the early scenes of this movie. I’ve seen How to Train Your Dragon, movie. And you, sir, are no How to Train Your Dragon”.
The sick, sad thing is the appearance of that poster actually gave me hope this might be a far more clever movie than it is. I mean, it’s pretty dumb and desperate to title-drop a far, far better (and far higher budget) movie about dragons, but if they were going somewhere with it, then cool. But… I guess they weren’t?
But, hey, the flick also has the kickable balls to reference the Ice Age movies… and now I might even have to defend the Ice Age movies since, you sir, are no Ice Age Movie. Dammit.
Anyhow, whatever this movie is called is about dragons in our modern world who want to find somewhere they can fly free. Yada yada a kid and a talking fox (or something) join him and are chased by a dragon-eating metal dragon. Dragon dragon. Did I say dragon enough? Because: FIREDRAKE!
The movie’s CGI is serviceable enough but totally uninspired and still pretty cheap. It’s lazy just like the script and the desperate attempts at comedy. I don’t have the ambition to bag on how cheap it all is… they didn’t try hard so I’m done trying too.
Yeah, this movie is for 5 year olds and not grumpy jerks like me… but this grumpy jerk still held his hand to the fire and forced himself to watch so it gets a grumpy jerk with a burned hand score. Boo hiss.
Score: 56