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I'm a bit torn, so I'll be breaking this down piece by piece to clarify which things worked for me and which didn't. Don't expect the plot to be spoiled. If you can't figure out exactly what's going to happen the whole film within five minutes of the movie starting, you probably haven't seen a movie before. Keep in mind that I have NOT read the books the movie was based on, so I am just looking at this from the point of view of a, well, viewer.

Bad Things:
- Horrible editing/direction. This covers most of the flaws with the film, really. I don't think they had a clear idea of their focus or how to play out the story before they started filming and then tried to cover for it later in editing... and did a piss poor job. The dragon literally grows from a toddler to a tween in the space of fifteen seconds. Apparently this was supposed to be a metaphor since another audience member who had read the book assured us this process was supposed to have taken about six months. In the film, unfortunately, it comes off as being pretty darn literal, and it was ridiculous. The whole movie is about a boy and his dragon... and they missed out on a lot of things they could have done to build their relationship in the start. There was a random cousin of Eragon's in the beginning who left the village. Totally useless. We never see or hear from him again, and the time spent on him could've been spent on the uncle so that we might've cared more when he died. Unless the homoerotic wrestling between the cousins was THAT important to the director. A lot of the transitions in the film were odd, abrupt, and without context. The story is apparently supposed to take place over a year - I thought it was a couple of days. Not good. You don't have to go all Lord of the Rings to show the passage of time - hell, use text markers if you need to! Just give me a little frame of reference, kthx.

- Weak script. This is not to say the entire story is useless or that all the dialogue is horrible, it is simply on the clich side. No one ever says anything which is surprising or original or interesting... which is really too bad.

- Poor characterization. This goes back to the first two problems for me. Again, the relationship with the uncle wasn't built enough, and the lack of any reference in passage of time leads us to believe Eragon has known Brom for only a day or two when he dies, so the emotional connection between them is also poorly established. I didn't care a thing about his little girlfriend either.

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