Bill Nighy’s distinctive, rather wonderful, Bill Nighy-ness is perfect in so many roles, especially those requiring an expensive lounge suit and a roguish arch of the eyebrow. But he’s a less comfortable fit for the part of a dragon in this animation adapted from a children’s fantasy novel by Carole Wilkinson. It is the tale of a plucky young servant girl in ancient China whose destiny is to save dragonkind from extinction, in an action-packed kids’ movie with plenty of PG-rated bashing and a real spirit of adventure. The letdown is some fairly average animation, and human characters that move like cheap marionettes with jolty limbs.
Ping (voiced by Mayalinee Griffiths) is an orphan who has grown up in a house where China’s last two dragons are kept locked up in a dungeon. There’s a lovely moment when Ping meets the pair: “Have I seen you in my dreams?” she wonders. As it turns out, Ping has magical powers. But her new friends are under threat from the ailing emperor; his life is in the balance and only dragon blood can save him. So the emperor dispatches sinister dragon catcher Diao (Anthony Howell) to bring him the ageing dragons (Nighy and Beth Chalmers).
