BRING together the world's two most celebrated visual effects houses . . . Weta Digital, the New Zealand company set up by Peter Jackson to create the parallel world of The Lord of the Rings and bring King Kong alive, and Industrial Light and Magic, used by George Lucas for Star Wars . . .

and you get Eragon, a fantasy epic set in Alaga sia, an oddlynamed medieval kingdom inhabited by oddly-named humans, sorcerers, monsters and fire-spouting dragons.

Any similarity with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings is, of course, purely coincidental.

Instead of a hobbit or a giant gorilla for a hero there's a flying dragon, Saphira, hatched like an abandoned ET out of a gleaming sapphire egg found by orphaned farm boy Eragon with whom she connects telepathically and trains to be her rider.

Eragon, if we are to believe his mentor Brom (Jeremy Irons), is the last hope of the people of Alaga sia, terrorised by the wicked king Galbatorix (John Malkovich) and his demonic sidekick Durza (Robert Carlyle).

The dragon is a beautifully realised computer-generated creature, standing 15 feet with eagle-like wings and scales instead of features, which . . .

helped by Rachel Weisz's ethereal voice . . . allows it to be emotionally expressive in a way screen dragons have never managed to be before.

The plot . . . yet another good versus evil yarn about a quest for freedom from dark forces . . . is a predictable recycling of all the books presumably devoured by precocious teenager Christopher Paolini, author of the original bestselling 'young adult' novel, part of a trilogy, of course.

The climactic battle of Farthen Dr . . . the appeal of this stuff depends heavily on gobbledegook language . . . is on the vast scale that digital manipulation allows and ends in a way that coyly sets up a seemingly inevitable sequel.