Dragonheart: A New Beginning (1999)

 

The original 'Dragonheart' is a heartwarming tale and a surprisingly fun watch, filled with good actors and some decent writing. 

This one already feels like the unholy hellspawn of diarrhoea-infested slime crawling up from the very bowels of script muck. You could sell this by saying: "The kids will love it!" but even that would be generous to the abomination that is this sequel.

Ah well.

After the death of Bowen, reports are stating that there are no dragons left anymore. But when a young stablehand by the name of Geoff discovers that the monastery where he works has a young dragon by the name of Drake, things are set in motion. This all has something to do with a prophecy of a two-tailed comet that will decide whether this dragon will turn evil or not.

If it sounds as if that doesn't make a whole lot of sense: it doesn't and it actually is a total McGuffin. 

Geoff wants to be a knight and befriends Drake, but when the chancellor to the king (named Osric) takes a shine to Geoff and teaches him to become a knight, the friendship sort of dwindles but not really? 

And then there's an elderly Chinese man and his supposed son who is clearly a girl and who turns out to be heiress to the Chinese Empire and who carries around the heart of an evil dragon and... 

Oh, and of course Osric is not who he seems. 

Enough plots for you? 

This film is a mess. Not only was the budget pretty paltry, which is awkwardly obvious in the fugly special effects that would look out of place in a videogame cutscene from 1989, but the acting is stiff and unconvincing, the linereading is stilted, the plot(s) are heaped on top on one another and don't really connect except when the writers wanted to (and even then)... 

And the resolution to it all is handled in less than 5 minutes in one of the most anticlimactic battles you will ever witness. 

This clearly made-for-tv production doesn't fool anyone and is a piss-poor attempt to cash in on the charm of the original. It's even more baffling that there were actually more sequels made. 

Just stick to the first one and don't let this tarnish your (possibly) fond memories of that one.