JABBERWOCK: DRAGON SIEGE - *1/2

DDirected by Steven R Monroe. Starring Tahmoh Penikett, Michael Worth, Kacey Barnfield, Raffaelo Degruttola. USA/Canada 2011, 84 mins. Certificate : 12.

As a genre ‘Swords and Sorcery’ has considerably waned in appreciation. Resigned to a few sporadic (and poorly received) box-office whimpers and a handful of TV shows that largely fail to recall the goofy charm of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS, it seems that fans of leather breast-plates and forged iron are dwindling. That’s not to say that the genre is dead - it’s just that there have been few successors to XENA’s throne and films like JABBERWOCK: DRAGON SIEGE aren’t helping matters.

Fitting more comfortably into the ‘medieval monster mischief’ niche, the film is a very loose interpretation of Lewis Carrol’s famous nonsense poem ‘Jabberwocky’ and tells the story of Francis (Tahmoh Penikett - from TV’s Haven, Dollhouse and Battlestar Gallactica) whose medieval village comes under siege from a mythical creature. A Syfy Channel Original, the film stands ironically against Syfy’s motto of “imagine greater”, as it really would be difficult to imagine a less inspired romp.

Admittedly sitting on the outskirts of ‘Swords and Sorcery’, the film certainly plays by a lot of the same drab rules. A damsel in distress? Check. A crazed outsider prophesying doom? Check. A ne’er-do-well finds courage and strength?.. The list goes on and if one were to take a shot (or perhaps a slosh of grog) every time another dismal cliché falls into place, they probably wouldn’t make it to the humdrum finale.

Penikett is fine in the starring role, although there really isn’t a lot for him to work with; he’s a pleasant, gravel-voiced hero, and nothing more. Strangely though, he fills shoes that would usually be occupied by a younger hero (an inexperienced smiths’ apprentice naïve to the ways of war) and his noticeably burlier presence feels rather odd. Kacey Barnfield provides the pouting love-interest with a fatal lack of personality, which rounds out a script peppered with flat attempts at humour and various other stock characters and scenes.

Creature CGI effects are adequate at best with the Jabberwock standing out against the film’s palette quite noticeably. There’s at least a little creative flair to the design but it still fails to capture the creepiness of John Tenniel’s artwork for the original poem. Carrol’s source material, recited at several points as a “prophecy”, has almost nothing else to do with Monroe’s film and merely highlights the silliness of medieval villagers regurgitating it as an “ancient Roman poem”.

The hastily tacked-on “Dragon Siege” moniker and shockingly misleading DVD box art (which appears to show an army of valiant knights battling a fire-breathing dragon) add further insult to injury. Never does the Jabberwock fight more than a handful of people at once, none of whom are knights and nor does it do any more than maul them. If stomping grumpily around a village containing approximately four buildings can be considered a siege, the bored-looking extras don’t seem to have been told.

A TV movie (and it shows - the inexplicable pauses for commercial-breaks are intact), the modest budget at least lends itself to costumes and sets that are decent, if uninspired and the film is low on violence, high on tedium. It’s telling when the most exciting part of the film is the camera unintentionally revealing shockingly hairy nostrils during a dying man’s rousing speech, and there is very little reason to recommend JABBERWOCK: DRAGON SIEGE - even to the chronically bored.

GORE IN THE STORE
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5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH