Attack of the Gryphon

Only my love of Amber Benson got me to not only watch the movie, but actually watch the whole thing. She was easily the best aspect of this movie, but even she couldn't do much to alleviate the pain caused by the stilted dialogue and hammy (or at the very least uneven) acting of most of her co-stars...and why were most of her lines dubbed and then poorly mixed?

The effects were terrible even by Sci Fi Original standards and I was completely underwhelmed by the repetitive score.

I hope the film gave Amber Benson a nice check so she can go off and make more brilliant flicks like Chance...

this movie was beyond lame. I immediately wondered how this kind of crap gets the green light when a talented high school writer could definitely do better. The direction was uninspired. The writing was just awful and so full of cliché, it became hard to watch at times.

However, my main concern was not the atrocious qualities of this film, but how it is being maintained at a 7.9 rating. It was at 7.8 before the show even aired on the Sci-Fi channel, an obvious attempt to pad the rating by someone with a vested interest. If you look at the other reviews you can see more dubious ratings where people will call it flawed but yet give it a rating of ten. That is an obscene use of IMDb for shameless promotion of such a crappy attempt at a film.

In looking at the other films by both the director and the writer of this film, I am convinced they are sleeping with the producers...

My goodness. I just finished watching this on the SciFi Channel, and it's everything I thought it would be. Everything about the gryphon, from concept design all the way up the pipeline to rendering & compositing, is sub-par. Everything about the story is asinine; it feels like the random result of a D&D match between the scriptwriters. Even the props and costumes are silly; the majestic Lance of Whatever the evil sorcerer spent the whole movie fondling looked like a claw hammer covered in gold leaf in several shots.

And the acting! Half the cast obviously drew inspiration for their roles by watching Lord of the Rings a few times, and the other half just didn't care. Evil Sorcerer Guy, for example -- I have never in my life seen a man so bored as that actor was in the final scene! He never did really attain the point of being an imposing presence. More than anything, he reminded me of one of the recurring characters on Food Network's Good Eats, so much so in fact I've been hunting around trying to see if it's the same actor.

All that said, it's good for watching on a Saturday night with a few buddies, especially if there's beer involved. If it had taken itself a little less seriously, it actually could've made for a really fun epic-film parody. In its current state, unfortunately, I can only recommend one viewing -- And that's if you're a fan of cheese-ball movies.

I had looked forward to this movie. I love the fantasy genre and expect to make allowances for low budgets, B actors and short time frames production schedules. But I think this one could have been made better in somebody's basement.

The costumes were unacceptable. They looked contrived and inappropriate for their purpose.

The acting was horrible. The hero and heroine didn't appear to be in this movie. Their dialog was stilted. The delivery appeared uncomfortable. Part of this could be blamed on the direction, but maybe the director couldn't pull better performances from them. Hard to say.

The plot of this genre is often far-fetched and I don't have a problem using my own imagination to fill in the usual gaps. But this film had too many gaps for even the most vivid imagination to assist.

I feel sorry for anybody whose name was associated with this film. It will certainly not do their careers any good.

What amazed me about this movie was the difference between the highs and the lows in it. Many of the locations were great. They picked some very nice places in Bulgaria to film some of the shots. The gryphon itself I thought was actually very good, but the way they put it into the picture was laughably bad. It was really, truly terrible. The plot was equally bad. Throw all the old fantasy clichés into a hat and just randomly draw 10 or so, and you'll get an idea of how bad the plot is. The acting also had highs and lows. Jonathan LaPaglia read his lines well - I bought his performance. Amber Benson, on the other hand, was terrible. Interestingly, it seemed like the decent performances were all by the "Delphites" (LaPaglia's character and his nation), and all of the "Locklanders" (Benson's character and her nation) were just the opposite.

Anyway, it was kind of fun to watch once my expectations were lowered to a reasonable level.