I sometimes like to call the SciFi network the "schizoid" cable group. They run "Battlestar Galactica", without doubt one of the best shows on television, then they put on, well, this. Trite, predictable and just plain bad, one wonders how such disparate programming can exist on a single station. "I saw it coming" is redundant. I pretty much had the entire plot from the completely unoriginal opening moments. I hung in for Amber Benson, an actress I really like, only to be disappointed by her flat reading of the uninspired script. Additionally, there is either very poor audio looping, or Ms. Benson's dialog is actually dubbed over by someone else in a number of scenes. Her co-star, Jonathan LaPaglia, proves that acting ability is not genetic. When he asks his mother, in complete monotone, whether he is up to the tasks ahead of him, it's not so much that he doesn't care, but as a viewer you have a hard time caring either. The one bright star in this overwhelming dreck is the gifted Larry Drake, playing the evil sorcerer. Armed with the prerequisite witchy babes in skimpy costumes, he makes the utmost of his heavily narrative role. Even the costuming, looking like it was pulled from SciFi convention stock, is mystifyingly awful. One of Mr. Drake's underdressed nymphs looks like a poor man's Barbarella, while the other, wearing red vinyl, looks like an escapee from an 80s music video. The lovely Amber Benson is clad, almost throughout, in an unfortunate "armor" which is obviously made of "pleather" and is noticeable only for the fact that it leaves room for her boobies. This leaves the Gryphon, an animated beast that looks like some Saturday morning cartoon. Two-dimensional and completely mismatched with most backgrounds, the mythical creature looks a little unfinished. Completely inexcusable in an age of advanced CGI. There is some pointless bloodshed an arrow through an eye, a decapitated Styrofoam head drenched in red paint (it bounces) which makes the film inappropriate for the very young, but honestly, it's inappropriate for anyone with a functioning brain. Save your DVRs for Galactica.
Review of Attack of the Gryphon
