Review: The Seeker (Grade: C)

"The Seeker: The Dark is Rising" is exactly what you've come to expect from a post-Harry Potter world in that there's nothing new here and it seems like we've seen it all before.

Based on another set of popular children's fantasy books this film might have worked if it had come out 10 years ago. But the problem is Harry Potter came out first and decided to tell it's epic story over seven films. Fantasy films that attempt to tell a new story need a sweeping canvas to do them any kind of justice, so by cramming a "new" story in an hour an a half makes for a shoddy film.

At different times throughout the film I felt like it had lifted various elements from nearly every other fantasy or Sci-Fi film in the genre. But I'll get into more of that later. This film is clearly aimed at pre-teens boys and girls and I immediately thought of it as "Harry Potter for Dummies." You know, like those fancy names usually given to people, things and places like in the Potter series or the Tolkien books were just too hard. It's almost as if the writer thought, "let me come up with the most generic names imaginable as to not confuse anybody." Good and evil will be the "Light" and the "Dark," the bad guy who rides a horse will be the "Rider" and the good people who have fought the bad ones for centuries will be "The Old Ones." Wow, and I thought my scripts were unimaginative.

The story is a simple one we've all seen a million times before, and much better I might add. In this one a a young boy (Alexander Ludwig) discovers that he is the last of a group of immortals dedicated to fighting evil. Traveling back and forth through time, he has to retrieve a series of clues before the sinister forces of evil get their mangy paws on them and bring about the end of the world. Umm, okay. Oh, and there's a also totally laughable twist about a long lost sibling.

Ludwig plays Will Stanton like he's trying out for a new version N'Sync with a stylish little gel flip in his hair and he clearly doesn't have the charisma required to play this role. Ian McShane plays one of the old ones and his only job is to stand around looking serious and explaining the entire backstory to not only young Will but to us. Funny how I understood it immediately while it took Will much longer for it to finally sink in. It made me question his intelligence, let me tell you. Perhaps the juiciest and most fleshed out role came from Christopher Eccleston who plays the Rider with such glee that he could make a living for the rest of his life in playing the baddie. But I've known that since his star making turn years ago in "Shallow Grave."

The unoriginality of this film was the most irritating part of it as it reminded me of Star Wars and revelations from the Bible all rolled into one, only much more bland and generic.

The film did get a few things right as it looked very beautiful and surreal and the special effects were top notch. I also thought that the fact that the Rider controlled animals to do his nasty work was a slightly different twist as well as a chance to show off some of the better CGI sequences I've seen in awhile. But it was a case of not enough and way too late.

Overall, these few things things are what elevated this film from a B-level film straight to DVD release, to a theatrical film that has a slight chance to make a profit. Now if only they had strung out this film to a series instead of cramming all of this into one film then this might have not have felt as rushed and simplistic.

Musings Grade: C

-- Janaki Cedanna