Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

So I saw The Asylum’s last Dragon themed joint directed by Mark Atkins in ‘Merlin and the War of the Dragons’ and while I couldn’t go so far as to call the movie good, it did have its merits. Now Mr. Atkins have followed that dragon fest with this similar dragon fest in ‘Dragonquest’, and though it hurts me to do so, I’m not going to be able to be as kind with this flick as it made swords, sorcery and dragon hunting about as exciting as a lecture on Renaissance era toe clipping.

When we first meet our hero Arkadi (Daniel Bonjour) the ‘boy’ as they keep calling him, despite the fact he looks like he’s pushing thirty to me, is perving out getting his peeping tom on while gazing at the clothes cleaning wench across the way, and he’s hitting the blount pipe. It’s all good because I’m thinking this is a hero I can relate to a little bit, but Arkadi’s pervy joy is interrupted by Grandfather (Gary Miller-Youst) who hands the boy a medallion, tells him to run for the hills, and try to find some cat named Maxim while you’re fleeing in terror.

You see there’s trouble in this mythical medieval land as the Dark Knight Krill (Brian Thompson), dressed like Darth Sidius for Halloween, has summoned the fire dragon and has arbitrarily decided it’s time for him to rule the world. The only hope to stop Krill, who has already killed the King and scorched half the earth, is The Keeper, who as it so happens, is our perverted pot smoking ‘boy’.

Well Arkadi does manage to find the wise knight Maxim, played by the damn near legendary Marc Singer who apparently thought it was ‘talk like a pirate day’ for his interpretation of this character, and along with Maxim’s hostile but hot female warrior sidekick Katya (Jennifer Dorogi) they take Arkadi on a quest to find the missing stones of this amulet which will give him the power to battle and defeat Krill.

Of course Arkadi is most unworthy for this quest but as time goes on his worth grows and his collection of the family jewels swells as well. But there is danger all around as Krill has powers like you would not believe, plus he has this flying dragon of fire and smoke under his control which he can throw his voice through, which is like an awesome trick. The question is will Arkadi be able to overcome his pervy past, and with his family jewels now swollen to point of eruption, can he lay to rest the threat of the evil of Krill?

All right, I’m sorry. I’m screwing around when there’s serious stuff to address here. A more accurate title for this movie would probably be ‘Jewel Quest’ because this is was what the movie was about since there wasn’t a lot of dragon questing going on here considering the damn dragon is right there overhead setting stuff on fire. But then, maybe he is questing for a dragon now that I think about it… but anyways my mans Jewel Quest wouldn’t have been so bad if the questing for the jewels was exciting or at least interesting. Most of Arkadi’s tests of his worth were moral challenges, and while reading about folks making critical decisions probably works wonders with the imagination, watching folks make critical decisions has a definite Wall Street Journal feel to it. It’s not like the effort wasn’t there though because there are sword fights and dragon fights and magical lightning bolt fights and a big old medieval style smack down but there wasn’t a lot of energy to a lot it which added to the overall tedium of this exercise.

Performance wise Brian Thompson was sorely underused and with his Darth Sidius hood covering his face and I don’t know if we actually got to see the man’s rather lethal and oppressive set of eyes in the flick. Actually the Star Wars vibe was so heavy I halfway expected Brian Thompson’s character to tell the ‘boy’ that ‘I’m your father’. It was good to see the Beastmaster again but that pirate style vocal inflection he had going on was a little odd. If he had said "Aye Matey!" at anytime during the festivities it would’ve just felt right. We did dig actor Russell Reynolds as the duplicitous character of Anson who has this smooth Leonard Nimoy groove going on, but besides that none of the performances were able to elevate the levels of excitement all that much.

We don’t want to be too hard on ‘Dragonquest’ because we do applaud the effort and we did appreciate seeing the Beastmaster which has us curious as to what his sister Lori might be up to these days but unfortunately ‘Dragonquest’ suffers from the sin of being boring, despite the obvious efforts to the contrary.