 Like Harry Potter, the main character in The Seeker is a teenage boy learning how to employ magical powers against evil. So naturally, critics are comparing it to the Potter movies -- mostly unfavorably. Not that the reviews are universally bad, but, as Liam Lacey observes in the Toronto Globe & Mail: "Whether you fully embrace the Harry Potter phenomenon or simply live with it, there's no question that J. K. Rowling is an imaginative story-spinner. The trouble is that she has ruined the field for the legions of the second-rate." But Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times dismisses it as a "dreary, spectacle-driven adaptation" of the novel by Susan Cooper to which director David L. Cunningham has applied what Crust calls "a jarring, disorienting style." On the other hand, Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel calls it an "eye-popping, jaw-dropping first installment in a film fantasy series that could turn out to be the new Harry Potter. Tautly scripted, smartly cast, beautifully shot in an England of snow and fog, it's a dazzling slice of cinematic imagination." |
