Christopher Paolini's bestselling trilogy of fantasy adventure yarns gets off to a lukewarm start with Eragon, the story of a young farmhand son Eragon who finds a large blue stone in the woods, an object stolen from the iron-fisted, feudal king (John Malkovich).

The stone turns out to be an egg that hatches to become a real-life dragon, and this is then a very important pet in a world where dragons and riders are all-important in the preservation of power. The king now without his precious dragon, is forced to rely on an evil sorcerer Durza (Robert Carlyle) to thwart Eragon's plans to organise a balance of power back toward minorities or the disadvantaged.

Eragon is at its best when dealing with practicalities. Eragon - young boy, has to train Saphira - the young dragon, they have a mentor Brom (Jeremy Irons) to help, but they're up against the worst - that nasty magician can conjure up.

Much that could make Eragon good in a Lord of the Rings way is sacrificed either through budget or scale. Some of the best scenes involve the dragon. It's brilliantly done here - likeable, with flying wings and so on - but you may feel that giving a dragon a high-pitched voice and no mouth movements detracts from the experience. Shouldn't a dragon have a growelly voice and a few mouth movements?

Eragon isn't bad as family entertainment and has reasonable special effects so you may want to latch on from the start, but equally it would not hurt if you missed it. It's a film that's well put together and the dragon is excellent, but this is start of the trilogy and one senses there is better to come.