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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Peace Arch Home Entertainment
Salesrank: 23924
Released: June 23, 2009 |
| Our Price: $4.35 |
| Used Price: $3.47 |
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MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Zoe is a little girl who believes in fairy tales. In order to help her uncle Lord Arnold get rid of a terrible dragon, Zoe decides she has to find some heroes. When she meets Gwizdo and Lian-Chu a couple of two-bit, fly-by-night dragon hunters she decides that she s going to believe in them and set out on an adventure to bring peace to the land.
Dragon Hunters with Bonus Comic Book Reviews:
Startlingly good 
2009-10-15 - Animation is hard because (a) the characters have even less time and human nuances with which to develop actual character, much less engage in character development, and (b) because directors and writers seem to believe that a few stock hints will suffice to create a believable character. This movie avoids those traps and delivers a surprisingly well-done plot and film.
This movie is not just well-animated (it is), not just visually detailed and plainly gorgeous (it is). The characters are actually interesting and placed into an interesting and slightly surreal plot and universe. The combination is amazing.
I watched it with my daughters (6 and 8). Generally acceptable, although one species of dragon engages in self-propulsion through its backside emissions and the worst language in the film occurs when one of the characters calls another a "bu**wipe". There are a few booger references. Additionally, two or three times during the film the sidekick dog-like character of the protagonist quartet demonstrates its ability to start a fire with its urine. I'm not fond of potty humor (especially with the risk that my 6 year old will sing out lines from the movie for days) but while it's there it's much more minimized than the Shrek movies. If your little girl dreams of being a princess who also goes on quests and helps fight dragons, they'll love this movie. Likewise, the main protagonist is an admirable hero who grows throughout the movie and would provide an excellent dragonslayer motif for boys.
Bottom line is that this movie is a keeper. After I finished watching it with my daughters, my wife got home from the gym and, after putting the kids to bed, I watched it again with my wife. Notably, my wife also thought it was excellent, again commenting on character development and the extraordinary scenery and animation. Not as amazing as some of the best Japanese anime, but well worth watching.
A Brand New Computer Animated Film I'd Never Heard Of?
2009-03-15 - I have to admit that my first reaction to seeing this on the video rack was suspicion that this might be another Aero-Troopers, the Plan-9-from-Outer-Space-awful, worst computer animated film ever made I wasted 90 minutes of life I can never get back upon the last time I took a chance on a computer animated film I'd never heard of before. However, despite some eerie similarities in world construction, this turns out to be one of the BEST computer animated films ever made, one I can recommend without hesitation.
To begin with the world of Dragon Hunters is simply gorgeous, a world of islands floating around in the sky, upon which gravity works oddly when it works at all. But this beautiful world is threatened to varying degrees by the dragons of the title, which range in degree of threat from annoying crop stealers to terrifying world devourers, thus the necessity for hunters of same.
Twenty years ago Lord Arnold lost his sight and his health trying to stop the World Gobbler's last rampage, now he impatiently and all but hopelessly awaits the return of the knights he dispatched to try and stop his pending rampage. So his fairy tale loving niece, Zoe, decides to lend a hand by sneaking out and finding some noble knights like those in her fairy tales, but what she finds are our two hapless heroes. Can a little girl's belief in them inspire a couple of two-bit, fly-by-night, down-on-their-luck dragon hunters into succeeding where a troop of noble knights failed, into stopping the most horrifying dragon this world has ever seen?
Well, the answer is obvious, but the fun is in how we get there.
Gwizdo and Lian-Chu make for a hilariously mismatched pair, whose widely differing reactions to Zoe, the dragon hunter groupie who is not quite as naive as she appears, threaten to tear their partnership apart,...
assuming of course that anyone survives this fiasco.
Note: Some retailers package this DVD with a free Dragon Hunters comic book, which is little to get excited about IMHO; Sergio Aragones did this sort of thing much better in Groo the Wanderer. The first 17 episodes of the first season of the animated TV show, which this movie is a prequel to, have been released on DVD: Dragon Hunters: Vol. 1 It's A Dragon's Life (ep. 1-4), Dragon Hunters: Vol. 2 Dead Dragon Walking (ep. 5-8), Dragon Hunters: Vol. 3 There's No Place Like Home! (ep. 9-11), Dragon Hunters: Vol. 4 Don't Look Now (ep. 12-14), and Dragon Hunters: Vol. 5 Unwelcome Guests (ep. 15-17).
