Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Whooo..where to start? I've been a fan of these books for about 20 years or so. Needless to say that I was psyched to hear of an animated project based on the books. Unfortunately, this falls prey to the typical "book/video game to movie" standard. The animation is about on par with late 80s/early 90s Marvel Saturday morning stuff and at times, the original D&D cartoon. It does not work well for the story being told, IMO. The movie is PG-13, likely due to some of the violence/blood which is not always at the same level for every fight scene. One fight they show people that were impaled on stakes, people being cooked by fire breathing dragons and blood when creatures are killed. Another fight there's no blood and the creatures are kind of just conked around. Another thing is the too many seconds spent on Tika's bouncy lady lumps. I get that Caremon is checking her out but it just doesn't work, it feels wrong. Maybe I'm too stuck relating the animation to the cartoons of my youth, where this would be way out of place. And then there are the dragons and draconians which are all done in CGI. I don't know if you've ever seen CGI characters and traditionally animated characters intergrated in the same scene successfully, but here they aren't. It looks like a bad special effect from a live action movie. The CGI is of the kind you'd find in a Hot Wheels commercial. The voice acting is not too bad. At first I didn't like Keifer Sutherland as Raistlin, but it grew on me as it went on. He really gets the right attitude down. For 'extras' you get some character designs and a preliminary animation test. Oh, and some trailers! If you're familiar with the story and you like it, I'd say rent it...and even then get it from Redbox for $1. If you don't know the story, who knows, maybe you'll like it because you won't be hoping for a lot, but the story may lose you because it's not a generic D&D world and you'll be missing out on a lot of the background...just buy the book! This series was the first, and one of the only, where I have actually shed tears while reading. I love these stories and that is the reason I may seem to be coming down hard on the movie. It's because I want the movie to be just as good as the books so that anyone not familiar with the books will get the same joy I did from reading them. I'm hoping that the next 2 (or more) installments will improve as they go.