Mystikal

"Mystikal" a Spanish production, is a movie that has great aspirations, but falls woefully short in the budget and story line departments. The plot is a mish-mash of "Lord of the Rings," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" with a touch of "Return of the Jedi" thrown in. The story concerns a witch's young, klutzy apprentice who inadvertently frees a demon of Hell which resided in an urn the Witch was in charge of safekeeping. With two more urns in danger of being opened before all Hell breaking loose, the apprentice, accompanied by a "Tinkerbell"-like Nymph and a whining, effeminate Dragon, stumbles from one failed rescue to another before having to face the final Demon and somehow, despite showing no talent for being able to do so, save the day. The movie looks like it was shot entirely on green-screen with everything added in post-production; the effects, while impressive for the sheer scope and amount used, are video-game quality at best, with choppy movements, flat rendering, and a dull, murky color palette used throughout. The movie's subtitles (there is no English language track) are horrific, with terrible syncing, dreadfully poor translation, and occasionally, with entire scenes lacking any subtitles! (The hero's first meeting with the aforementioned Dragon being a glaring example.) That's not to say the movie is completely without merit - I was impressed with the scale attempted, and the design of the picture isn't half-bad. (Well, the third Demon DID remind me strongly of a rabid hamster, when I think they were wanting something more wolf-like); but the flat characterizations, the ragged green-screen effects, and the inept subtitles pretty much sank this for me. As far as ratings go, I would give this a PG - some fantasy violence and bloodless deaths, nothing offensive.

This could have been a pretty good B movie had they did an English overdub like they did in the '70s. It wouldn't have mattered at all if the lips didn't match the words. Even the subtitles weren't done very well. If they would have just put in a little more effort, I probably would have given it a 4 star

I picked this up at Wal-Mart under the "new releases" area. The film was in Spanish with English subtitles. It contains a lot of CG creatures and backgrounds. It starts with demons vs wizards and then moves to later times when everyone had forgotten about the urns which hold the demons, except they haven't. A wizard's apprentice must fight the demons and save the world. This is Spain attempting to do some kind of Celtic epic like LOTR. The use of "Saint Peter" was a bit odd. So this was a post-Christian period with a dragon, magic, witches, and nymphs? For the kids.

Aviso a navegantes: Aunque en el producto y en el anuncio se indica que el idioma es español, en realidad es euskera. ¡Un fiasco total, vamos! Ahora entiendo porqué la película no se ha distribuido en España. Un grave error de marketing en mi opinión.