Earthsea

Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books are full of magic, mystery, philosophy and intensely powerful storytelling.

But you wouldn't know it by this lackluster adaptation. Instead, "Earthsea" aspires to be "Harry Potter" in a medieval "Lord of the Rings" setting, with two plots mishmashed haphazardly into one, shoddy special effects, laughable action scenes, and some seriously wooden acting.

Rebellious, impatient Ged (Shawn Ashmore) attracts the attention of the wizard Ogion (Danny Glover) when he magically rescues his village from raiders. He joins Ogion as an apprentice, but soon proves too impatient -- and so Ogion sends him to the wizard school on Roke, where Ged soon proves to be one of the most gifted pupils. But his pride and anger become his undoing, when he accidentally summons a foul demon.

Meanwhile on the island of Atuan, the High Priestess (Isabella Rossellini) is slowly wasting away, and she hastily selects her successor, teenage Tenar (Kristin Kreuk). What no one knows is that the king of the Kargides is having her poisoned, and his priestess lover is trying to find a way into the labyrinth below, where the dangerous Nameless Ones are kept. To save all of Earthsea, Ged must brave its most terrifying dangers.

"Earthsea" basically is two books' worth of plots crammed together, but not well -- the entire tone is changed to "Harry Potter in Middle-Earth," with the plucky wizard pupil on a roadtrip with his funny chubby buddy against the forces of evil. The entire time at Roke just reeks of Hogwarts.

Even if judged purely on its own merits, "Earthsea" is still a disaster -- the direction is clunky, and the special effects are amateurish at best. Moments that should have been brilliant, such as Ged's climactic confrontation with the Gebbeth, fall flat. By the time we get to the drippy, sentimental climax, the entire plot spirals into a Disneyesque lovefest that is nothing short of nauseating.

And the script isn't much better. In fact, it's simply atrocious, full of unintentionally hilarious moments (a lisping dragon), deus ex machinae, a surprisingly silly demonic threat, and horribly written cliched dialogue ("So this is our destiny?" "If not us, then who?"). When Vetch and Ged dress up as Kargides to fool an idiot commander, you know the movie has hit rock bottom.

It doesn't help that Ashmore and Kreuk are tolerable actors at best, but they get progressively more wooden as the plot continues. They're only saved by the greater talent of the other actors -- Chris Gauthier is lovable AND smart as Ged's best buddy, and Glover and Alan Scarfe are given too little to do as some paternal old wizards. (And Amanda Tapping has a split-second cameo)

Isabella Rossellini deserves special credit as High Priestess Thar. I'm not sure what an actress of her caliber is doing in a movie like "Earthsea," but she saves every scene she's in -- she's warm, kindly, wise, powerful and devastating in her disapproval.

The Sci Fi Channel tried to have it all in "Earthsea," but ended up with a muddled mess that tries to be everything, and ends up with nothing. Cliched, cutesy and only redeemed a little by some good acting.

When my daughter brought home this video from the library I was initially thrilled, being an Ursula K LeGuin fan from way back (gradeschool, actually), and sat down with her to watch it with anticipation. After all, the video case did proclaim "Award Winning Production!" ... and I sort of recognized some of the actor's names ....

What a huge disappointment. About the only similarity I could find in the film with the novel were a sharing of some of the names and a very loose adaptation of the plot. The "special effects" were very poorly done (I've seen much better graphics looking over my kids' shoulders while they're playing their computer games), hte actors came across like they were either walking through or, in some cases, completely hamming up their parts,and the whole thing wasjust a mess, in my opinion.

My advice: Avoid this like the plague. It wasn't worth the time to watch as a free library video - can't imagine actually spending money to BUY it. Invest in the original book itself, and, if this appeals to your young reader, in the excellent sequels.

This is one of my favorite mini-series. Nothing can compare to Lord of the Rings .... but this min-series comes pretty close. It tells the story of a young mage that trys to take the fast route to magical power and make a critical error in doing so and releases an evil upon the world unlike the world has ever seen. After that he has to try to stop the evil he released and the only the way he can is with the help of a young priestess who is the woman of his dreams (his soul mate). Can he get together with her to stop the evil or will the evil stop him first?