Dragonkeeper Review
Dragonkeeper (2024) Film Review, directed by Salvador Simó and Li Jianping, written by Carole Wilkins, Pablo Castrillo, Ignacio Ferreras, and Rosanna Checcini, and starring, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey, Anthony Howell, and Mayalinee Griffiths.
Dragonkeeper is a dull, tedious and truly soulless affair, an animated film so generic it inspires neither passion nor investment. There is hardly a redeeming quality to be found in its rather short run-time, in only 90 minutes of length managing to outstay its welcome. A soulless affair indeed.
Set in ancient China, Dragonkeeper follows an orphaned slave girl Ping (Mayalinee Griffiths) who discovers she is a Dragon Keeper. She shares a magical and special bond with the mythic creatures and must protect a dragon egg bestowed upon her by two imprisoned dragons (Bill Nighy and Beth Chalmers) in her master’s (Tony Jayawadena) dungeon, the last of their kind. What follows is unfortunately neither magical nor special as we are made to endure a deluge of non-sensical plot and painful voice acting that is almost comical in its delivery.
Of its central voice cast, there is a vast disparity between the efforts given to their performances, ranging from excessive exaggeration to extreme incompetence; all results are catastrophic for the film. The exuberant performances of characters such as villain Diao (Anthony Howell) are less of a burden, their efforts palpable even to dire outcomes, but protagonist Ping is regrettably diabolical, delivering one of the most comical final monologues of the last few years, sure to have both parents and children alike perplexed by its delivery. Alongside slurred lines and a drab delivery, Ping whines endlessly in the film and offers no compelling attributes as a character. The film almost has us root for her in her position as a slave, but fails to ever truly comment on the matter, it is merely brushed aside as is much else in the film.
Perhaps the most confounding aspect of the voice cast comes from choosing distinctly British performers for the English version of the film. While tailored for English-speaking regions, it remains a confused choice for a film tied so culturally to China to have such exaggerated British accents. Some characters are so excessively cockney at times, it feels parodic. Even Bill Nighy as Long Danzi turns in a dreary and lifeless performance, not even he can save this.
There is little else to arrest audiences in watching Dragonkeeper. A terrible voice cast is not redeemed by anything further the film has to offer. There is a lack of any real visual splendour, flat and uninteresting, at times even unpleasant. The animation is fluent enough but appears shoddy and unpolished at points, failing to excite any sensation in its viewing; children would surely not be captivated by its plainness. Its visual plainness extends to its generic conventionality, a Disney B-Movie at best even complete with a token cute animal, who albeit offers some slight charm throughout. Bill Nighy’s dragon Long Danzi moves through the film like a caricature as a guardian and guide to Ping, spitting such typical, uninspired wisdom at her in nearly every line that it becomes almost satirical. It is wholly, as standard as animated films come.
At its heart, Dragonkeeper is a truly baffling film. From its frankly appalling voice cast, uninteresting animation and tedious storytelling, the film fails at any point to illicit any strong response from its audience. It is neither charming nor compelling for audiences of any age, but instead trivial and insignificant. When it hits UK theatres on 27 September 2024, audiences would be wise to simply ignore its insipid existence entirely.
Rating: 2/10
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