Well, I thought that MTV was the most shameless thing available to the viewing public, but it looks like that station is gonna be fighting a brutal, one-on-one, no-holds-barred cage match against Dragon Wars for that honor. I went to see it at the theater recently, and I just need to make a formal and very sincere apology to joy and happiness while I can. I am so sorry that I, as a human being, did nothing to stop production of this film before its contamination... I mean "release". I just sat idly by while I was bombarded with trailer after trailer advertising what I knew would be stupid, but I assumed would entertain me.
Here's the layout: Our main character (I don't remember his name, I'm proud to say) is what looks to be a scrawny, shaggy, unshaven undergrad who has finagled his way into a career as a reporter for a major news station. His voice never rises above the level of a timid librarian, and his facial expressions, or "expression", I should say, remains unchanging. But it is not unchanging in a mysterious way that draws you in and makes you yearn for the deep complexities that surely stir within his mind. It is unchanging in a way that makes you certain that he is thinking about a squirrel he saw on his way to the set that morning. Anyway, he gets told a story about a serpent that may change into a celestial dragon if it performs a good deed and some sacrifice or another takes place. Apparently this fellow is a reincarnated warrior from feudal Japan and he has a gaudy necklace to prove it. Now, in the area of serpents, all I saw was an evil serpent who terrorized a major metropolitan area in search of a girl. There is an evil man who looks like a half-melted Bill Marray doppelganger and is also leading an evil army in search of the same girl. Everyone is after the girl because she has a dragon-shaped birthmark on her shoulder. So what! I knew a guy once who had a birthmark on his thigh that was shaped like a peanut. Did he ever live in fear of being persued by hordes of circus elephants? No! Anyway, the evil man's voice is modulated to sound like Louis Armstrong suffering from laryngitis. At one point in the film he places himself in front of a moving car so as to get hit by it... then he does it again moments later, and I'm not sure why. There's also a shape-shifting Robert Forster who beats up some large drunks, and an overweight zoo worker who must have been inspired by everything Kevin James has ever been a part of.
Well, everything probably culminates at the end and there might be a dragon that makes a cameo appearance at the end. But, truthfully, Dragon Wars is 90% dragon-free and 147% substance/entertainment-free. Admittedly, I didn't/couldn't sit through the whole thing and, with what must have been about 20 minutes left of the movie, I got out of my seat, went to the men's room and went into the screen next door to see what was playing. I found myself entranced, in comparison, by a portion of the end credits to Mr. Woodcock.
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