The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens (2008)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Fresh and Exciting

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Even as "Eragon" rode on the, er, dragon's tale of Star Wars, so this arose from the sea to try to bank on Harry Potter. Unfortunately, you have to "best" the original material if you don't want to sink at once and be consigned to the $2.00 movie bargain bin at Wal-Mart."Billy Owens is turning 11. Turns out this little rapscallion was born on the 11th day of the 11th month, at 11pm no less, so it ventures to reason he has some powers of the magical variety..."Well, with credentials like that, it's a dead certainty that he would be able to end a world war, so I suppose that the next stop for Billy is a flick in which he goes back in time and manages to do just that.

You like magic? Imagine a bored parent who writes a school play and then decides to film it with random people in their neighborhood reciting a few lines, followed by cheap effects they threw in on their PC at home. That's about the level of magic here.When I looked this "movie" up, I was astonished to see that there is a sequel. However, considering that it appeared to have been made for free, then they shouldn't have had a hard time coming up with the money for another one. What's equally disturbing is the fact that it took no less than THREE people to write this, and yet another to work on the "screenplay".Rowdy Roddy Piper, if you can believe it, completely outshines the rest of the cast. You can't really blame unpolished child actors for not being very good, but with any level of decent input from a director or an acting coach (even a grade-school theater teacher) you would have gotten better performances. Since everyone else seemed to just walk in and read a couple of lines, we can't assume they wanted any level of "performance".As other reviewers pointed out, everything else about it was equally amateurish. The camera work, effects, costumes...probably all provided by the people in the movie, who hopefully didn't get paid for much of anything other than residuals from DVD rentals. As the end credits rolled, I saw that a number of the extras had the last name "Gregg." For his sake, I hope that they aren't related to Clark Gregg, the hilariously dark genius involved in Choke and Avengers, because that would be pretty embarrassing.Still, the kids were cute, if not good actors, and I disagree with others about letting kids watch it - if they're really young, like mine, it will still entertain them, mostly because they haven't learned how to differentiate this from anything good. I'm giving this 3 stars because Roddy and the hot mom gave fairly decent performances, and the kids did better than the rest of the adults, especially with the obvious lack of any kind of training or direction. Hopefully, if they attempt any sort of careers in the performing arts, they will look back on this movie and see the need for a bit of training (any amount would be better than none) before forging ahead.

If you're the kind of person that loves to watch terrible movies, this is a great one to get. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I swear it was made with iMovie..You can hear the audio popping in and out, terrible sparkle effects used frequently in the movie, really horrible acting, poor sound quality in general, stupid characters, incoherent plot, and the camera angles are trash. Half the time it's a 2 minute camera view with no transitions. At times you can't see the face of who's talking. Awkward dialog... it's all so great. I'm so happy people decided to put time and effort into this trash...It's unbelievably horrid and I enjoyed every second of it. It rivals Troll 2 in my book.

If I could give his a minus review I would give is a -10. Even with the synopsis I saw on my in home viewing service, I felt this was a Harry Potter rip-off. I was right to a degree.You shouldn't watch this movie it just not tolerable. Had the acting been better it would have been something to watch.Well this is NOT a movie/video on how NOT to make a movie as one review had stated it is one that shows you the actors should get a script long enough before the actual film date so they can be believable.A lot of the details are filled in by voice over from the "Know-it-all" girl (Hermiony Granger rip-off from Harry Potter)but in an annoying manner. While in HP, Hermiony at least is shown to get her knowledge by reading book. This "Know-it-all" girl just seems get her facts out of thin air and though are factual they come across as annoying.I couldn't watch it threw the end. I am glad I am not charged for each thing I watch on my in home viewing service.This is one to skip.