DVD Review: Dragonlance - Dragons of the Autumn Twilight

Fans of the popular Dragonlance novels will find something to like and hate in the animated feature film that adapts the first book in the series written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

The movie does a good job adapting the first novel and stays pretty true to the story and the way of the characters’ appearances. Sadly, the animation doesn’t do the story justice. At times, it seems almost a throwback to the bad animation of the classic Dungeons and Dragons series. The movie’s plot stays pretty true to the first book in the series. However, at times it appears like it is trying to be too epic. While the huge story works in novel form, the movie tends to drag from time to time as it covers a lot of ground. Set in the world of Krynn following 300 years of peace, an evil goddess named Takhisis and her army of dragons have come to rule the world. Led by the evil general Verminaard (David Sobolov ), her army of Draconians (kind of like humanized dragons) and are conquering the world.As the story unfolds, we are introduced to a band of heroes consisting of the wizard Raistlin (Sutherland), the priestess Goldmoon (Lawless), the half-elven warrior Tanis (Rosenbaum), the dwarf Flint Fireforge (Fred Tatasciore), the female warrior Tika (Michelle Trachtenberg), Raistlin’s warrior brother Caramon Majere (Rino Romano), the Kender thief Tasslehoff Burrfoot (Jason Marsden), the knight Sturm Brightblade (Marc Worden), and the barbarian Riverwind (Phil LaMarr). Although unsure of their path at first, the heroes eventually find themselves on a quest to stop Takhisis and her army before their world is destroyed.The movie is rated PG-13 (more than likely for the action and violence), but stays pretty family friendly. It is a straight-forward fantasy tale and will appeal to kids or anyone who enjoyed films like Lord of the Rings. However, diehard fans of the novels might be more than a little upset.The voice-over acting of the film’s cast doesn’t really work – with the actors never quite matching the characters they play. Sutherland does a good job in the role of Raistlin, but pretty much just sneers his dialogue. It is clear he is trying to match how the character is described in the books, but it seemed a little too over-the-top for me.

Lawless also seems to try to match how readers might expect Goldmoon to sound rather than actually creating a character. Her character is a focal point of the story, and the actress just never really seems to master the changes Goldmoon goes through during the story. Given her Xena roots, Lawless knows how to handle the fantasy genre, but doesn’t seem to put that knowledge to good use in this movie.Other actors (such as LaMarr, Rosenbaum and Tatasciore) don’t work at all, and just sound like generic voices plugged into any animated film. LaMarr, Tatasciore, Rosenbaum and Worden have appeared in other animated projects (such as the Justice League series from Warner Bros. and the Ultimate Avengers films from Lionsgate), but don’t seem to gel with their roles here.Another major problem with the movie is the more-than-lacking animation. With CGI animation releases like Beowulf, this film seems to be a huge step backwards. Yes, it was done on a much cheaper budget, but that isn’t the reason for its bad animation. The film combines traditional 2-D animation with 3-D CGI animation (although only the dragons and Draconians are CGI). This combination does NOT work, and becomes more of a distraction than a cool idea of mixing the animation of today with the nostalgia feel of the old Saturday morning cartoons.The movie ends with a hint to a sequel, and I would like to see the rest of the series adapted. I just hope they fix these problems first and make any future films strictly traditional animation or CGI animation. The DVD is a little light on bonus material, but does have the original test animation and initial character designs.While kids and some fantasy fans might enjoy Dragonlance - Dragons of the Autumn Twilight, the movie was a bit of a letdown for me and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who really loved the novels. It tries to live up to the epic quality of the books, but the animation and voice-over issues made me just wish for the credits to roll.