Overrated and overhyped

How sad is this?

Brilliant and touching

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I was interested in seeing Fire and Ice, as it did have an intriguing premise, but I was also dubious. Actually, Fire and Ice is a movie that have both been better and worse, not bad but not good. Its good points are the reasonably attractive photography, the well-done and animated dragons, good scenery/sets and charismatic performances from Arnold Vosloo and John Rhys-Davies. On the other hand, Fire and Ice also has its bad points, and they are often dull action sequences where little interesting happens and are clumsily executed in choreography, a stilted, corny script that holds few surprises, a predictable story that for a film of this genre lacks wonder and thrills, characters that generally you don't just engage with because they are either underdeveloped or on the irritating side and the remainder of the acting coming across as rather wooden. Overall, very average for me. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I watch cheesy SyFy for just that--the cheesiness. But sometimes, the movies surprise me with how good they are, this is one of them. I thought the dragons were well done and although character development was predictable, I thought Amy Acker did a great job. I've missed seeing her since Dollhouse was canceled, so this was great. And who can not enjoy Arnold Vosloo? Ever since I saw him in The Mummy and 24, I have looked for movies with him in it and he was very good in this one. Tom Wisdom was a very believable character and easy on the eyes. John Rhys-Davies was a great addition to this movie and showed me that although he tends to be typecast, he can still make his character very unique and fun to watch.I found myself not wanting to miss any of this movie. I would recommend it to anyone, and those that are expecting a blockbuster movie like LOTR, take this for what it is, a SyFy movie, entertaining, fun and in this case, an 8 out of 10.SyFy Saturday's rock!!

This was a cheapie DVD from the supermarket checkout bin. It stars Amy Acker (Fred from Angel), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep from the Mummy movies), John Rhys-Davies (from any fantasy movie which will stand still long enough for him to get into costume and nip in front of the camera), a chap called Tim Wisdom who I've never heard of before and never expect to hear of again given his achievements in this movie, and a couple of dozen people whose names end in -escu (which also applies to most of the crew).Intrepid princess Amy Acker gets stuck into finding a way of defending the kingdom from a fire-breathing dragon. Which involves setting an ice-breathing dragon onto it. Which, as it turns out, isn't actually that great an idea.Thing is, there's actually some potential here. Acker is OK, Vosloo is always fun, Rhys-Davies does his usual thing (Brian Blessed-lite), and the assorted -escus manage to be in the right place at the right time. More importantly, it looks good. The cinematographer plainly knows what he's up to, and the film is very attractively photographed. And despite a less than generous budget, the CGI dragons (clearly based on stingrays) are, for the most part, well animated and well integrated into the background plates, far more so than is usually the case for this sort of movie.But everything is massively let down by the script. Every plot development is either signalled well in advance or else is hugely predictable. There are constant exhortations to the princess to stay where she is, remain out of danger etc., and she takes no notice of any of them. By about the 10th time she has ignored all advice and rushed into peril, they even make a story point out of it.The -escus all swordfight by rushing at their opponent brandishing their swords over their head - clearly they all had the same swordfighting teacher, and he was crap.And regrettably the showdown scrap between the dragons is also crap - well animated, but nothing actually happens. And it doesn't happen A LOT. In fact you wonder whether it's ever going to stop not happening. And then factor in endless riding across the same hill, field, and bit of forest....In the end, though it's the script which lets it down.

Imagine a standard story about the evil terror of the land, the good king, the bad king, the corrupted king adviser, the good princess and the valiant knight. Any number of scripts and movies could have provided inspiration for this. But no, they wanted to do it the MediaPro way. That is, BTW, a Romanian production company.The result is some nicely drawn dragons, although completely disconnected. If they weren't "the terror", I would have guessed they came from another movie altogether. Then the script is completely boring and there are some absolutely horrible action scenes and acting.Arnold Vosloo plays well, I think he is one of the good actors around, too bad he is not cast in decent roles. Why did he accept this role? Did he need money so badly? Or are people in casting just oblivious to acting talent and he plays what he can get?Same goes for John Rhys-Davies. He plays his usual "Professor" type and has the decency to die when the part got just too ridiculous. His acting wasn't good either, although I have to admit, any actor would have been hard pressed to feel motivated in a movie such as this.The Romanian actors were decent enough, except Cabral Ibacka and Loredana Groza, who are Romanian TV celebs, not actors, and it painfully shows. I liked the evil king, too, not because the part was interesting or the acting great, but because I remember the actor living in my neighbourhood :)Bottom line: avoid this. But do look for the extended 5 minute or more trailer. It looks great and has more production and direction values than 10 Fire&Ice movies. Maybe they will extend it to a complete feature film some day :)