Eragon (PG) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

The whole point of fantasy, you would have thought, was to let your imagination run free, to come up with something unfamiliar and strange. But there is hardly a character, an incident or an idea in this boring dragon saga that you can't trace directly to some other source: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy - after a while, counting the influences is the only way of staying awake. Ed Speleers is gauche as the young farm boy who discovers that he is the last of the dragon riders; Jeremy Irons is weary and out of place as the Obi-Wan Kenobi figure who must teach him to use his new-found powers; John Malkovich is feeble as the tyrant they must overthrow; Sienna Guillory is worryingly gaunt as a rebel princess; and the CGI dragon isn't a patch on the Harry Potter hippogriff. What with dragon-eyed boys, demonically possessed sorcerers and dead-eyed orc-type warriors, it's a bonanza for the tinted contact lens industry.