Earthsea

Earthsea

Well, let's just get down and dirty, shall we? You all want to know whether the Sci-Fi Channel's three-hour movie Earthsea is worth a hoot, right? And you're not sure to trust all those negative reviews you read when this thing came out a few years ago.

You've come to the right place, bucko! Video Sewer always gives it to ya straight! There are two ways to judge this 'movie,' as a standalone piece of fantasy cinema, and as an adaptation of one of the all-time great fantasy novel trilogies. So, without further ado, let's hit both targets.

Earthsea tells the tale of a young, impetuous boy tired of living the rural life. He has a yen for adventure, if you will, and (in this case) a talent for wizardry. Conflict arises, as a marauding King wants to unite the Empire (ahem) for his own evil purposes. Can our hero, young Ged, rescue the Princess, defeat the evil King, and destroy the Deathstar?

Wait, this isn't Star Wars, it's just the plot of Star Wars boosted from George Lucas and crammed into a pathetic shell cobbled together from just the books of the Earthsea trilogy.

Already I'm tired of this exercise. Earthsea boasts mostly wooden performances, B-grade CGI effects, and pacing that is both frantic and leaden at the same time. Nice trick!

As an adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin's towering work, Earthsea is an abominable head-scratcher. One hopes they drove a garbage truck full of money up Ursula's driveway, then clubbed her on the head and forged her signature on the release form.

Earthsea would have rightly been noted as “loosely inspired by the novels” as huge aspects of the series are ignored, and usually vital parts of a 'dramatic story' such as 'conflict' are created out of whole cloth for the movie.

OK, wasted enough time on that one, haven't we? But as a reminder, complete disregard for source material, poor performances, a surfeit of dramatic tension and wonky special effects do not a good fantasy movie make. Don't even rent this one out of curiosity, or as a drunken, I-just-want-to-shut-my-brain-down lark. As Obi-Wan says: this little one's not worth the effort.