THE CHRISTMAS DRAGON (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological* 

CHRISTMAS DRAGON is a slow-moving American kids' fantasy shot in the forests of Utah with assorted no-name actors. I think the location is supposed to be medieval England because of some of the names (Garrett, Roslyn) and one or two English accents, but no place-names are ever mentioned in the dialogue. I assigned DRAGON a fair mythicity mostly for the basic notion of putting a Santa Claus narrative in a vaguely Tolkienian world of elves and goblins-- Tolkienian mostly because in that universe, goblins/orcs are created as a mockery of elves. In this movie by director/co-writer Tom Lyde, elves are turning into goblins-- though the main threat to human welfare is the disappearance of "Father Christmas." Unfortunately, Lyde has little idea as to how to construct a world of magical fantasy, relying more on hijinks after the fashion of GOONIES.

There's some wasted potential drama in the initial set up, taking place six years before the main story. Ayden (Bailee Michele Johnson) is a teenaged girl living on a farm with her parents, first seen receiving a Christmas present from them (with a quick cut to the beaming face of Father Christmas, as if he had anything to do with the matter.) Then emissaries from the local lord, a pair of tax collectors named Gazared and Bomtail, visit the farm, accompanied by a quartet of hired thugs and a jail-wagon. A quarrel breaks out, making it evident that the tax collectors came with the intention of capturing the family and selling them as slaves. (The briefly mentioned lord they work for is never "on stage.") When the emissaries stick the two parents in the rolling cell, Ayden flees to avoid capture. She stumbles across a nest of dragon eggs that she's never seen there on her own land. The trespass brings a Mama Dragon swooping down, and she burns up all the guards, though the two collectors in charge escape. Sadly for Ayden, the ravening beast also firebombs Ayden's parents.  

                                                                                                               Cut to six years later. Ayden, rather than being embittered by her loss, seems to be a happy, level-headed teen who doesn't in the least hate dragons, even though one gratuitously killed her parents. Ayden lives in a vaguely religious orphanage with five other kids, mostly younger than Ayden, and most of whom sport American accents. She waxes rhapsodic about the custom of gift-giving, but the other orphans seem to think Christmas is some ancient custom no one celebrates any more. Then Ayden meets an elf in the woods. It's not clear if she's seen any elves before this, though the girl seems surprised that this one has super-long ears and fangs. The ugly elf gives her a magical "waystone" and tells Ayden she alone can save Father Christmas, who stands on the brink of death. He also speaks of some vague cosmic threat called "The Snarl" but does not explain further.                                                                                                                                                                                                             The glowing stone convinces the other kids to join Ayden on a quest to find Father Christmas's HQ, which is implicitly somewhere in their country and not at a certain North Pole. One kid gets left behind when the two slavers from earlier take him prisoner, and often these two minor evildoers seem the main villains over the abstraction of the Snarl, for the kids encounter Gazared and Bomtail in two separate scenes later. After a lot of pointless wandering in the forest, the waystone guides the kids into contact with a roguish adult named Airk, who joins them despite his having a deep dark secret.   

The kids and their adult friend wander some more and encounter a small handful of ogres and goblins, while someone makes the belated conclusion that the once beneficent elves are changing into malevolent goblins. The group also comes across a young dragon wounded by human hunters, and Ayden is first in line to play the role of Androcles to the hurt beast.

                                                                                                              We finally get all the exposition that should've come in the first hour when the kids are attacked by goblins but saved by a staff-wielding kung-fu lady elf, Saerwyn (Melanie Stone, the only performer who puts some spirit into her line-readings). After also punching out Airk, thus establishing their shared romantic history, Saerwyn explained that Airk stole a magical globe from his father-- none other than Father Christmas himself-- thus bringing about the crisis. The ersatz Santa Claus has for a thousand years used the magic globe both to suspend time on the night when he runs around delivering gifts, as well as suspending his own aging processes. Airk's mother died at some earlier point, but he stole the globe with some half-baked notion of turning back time to bring her back. He presumably failed but didn't just go back home to return the globe for "Reasons." Now that everyone finally knows everything-- except maybe what the Snarl is-- the kids can journey to Father Christmas's home and dope out what they can do to revive "the spirit of Christmas" with their childish imaginations. The aged Father gets all better and even drives a flying sleigh pulled by the young dragon rescued earlier.  

I suppose I'm being harsh with a project almost certainly aimed at very young, very undiscriminating children. But Lyde does such a bad job with some half-decent concepts that I think even most of those kids would be pretty bored and would start asking to play RUDOLF THE RED-NOSE REINDEER before even finishing this draggy dragon effort.