ecl@hocsj.UUCP (09/28/84)
FLIGHT OF DRAGONS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
This is a feature-length animated film that was made for TV by Rankin
and Bass. They previously did THE HOBBIT for TV the same way. I am pretty
sure it never played in the New York area though in some parts of the
country I am told it did air on network TV. It is loosely based on the
pseudo-non-fiction study of dragons by Peter Dickinson. That book did not
tell a story, but this is a story set in his world. It also credits "St.
Dragon and the George" by Gordon R. Dickson.
The film makes the same error that THE HOBBIT made: it chooses overly
familiar actors to do the voices, and their voices then don't really go with
the characters. The voice of the wise old wizard is done by Harry Morgan.
He is as unwizardly as just about anyone I can imagine and it rubs off onto
his character. The hero is played by John Ritter. The character is
supposed to be Peter Dickinson himself who by a strange set of affairs was
writing the truth when he wrote his fantasies...shades of a storyline in the
old DC comics.
The premise of the story is oddly self-contradictory. Apparently
technology is wiping out magic and the hero must stop it from being wiped
out completely. Why? Because technology will stagnate without magic. It
is magic like flying fairies that makes man want to learn to fly also, so he
invents the airplane. Magic crystal balls were the inspiration for the
invention of television (it is claimed). So technology is both the monster
and the maiden in distress. This one gets points for being pro-technology
in the long run. Most film fantasy is of the WIZARDS variety, claiming that
technology is unnatural and wrong. Not a great film, but as good as a lot
of films released to theaters this summer. Catch it on cassette.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!lznv!mrl