Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

submitted by weavilsatemyface from self.Movies

I watched Dungeons And Dragons last night. What a hot mess. 2 out of 5 stars.

The good

Chris Pine and Hugh Grant did their usual sterling jobs. Both are very charismatic actors, and Grant wonderfully chews the scenery every time he's on screen. Full marks to them. Michelle Rodriguez did an acceptable job as a warrior-woman. The rest of the ensemble cast hit their marks and managed to say their lines with a straight face.

The action scenes (when they eventually occurred) were decent enough, but nothing to rave about. It was nice to see a couple of iconic D&D monsters.

The Diversity™ in the cast managed to feel natural rather than forced.

The Bad

The visual effects ranged from acceptable to poor, especially the CGI.

Some of the humour was good but most of the jokes were lame and fell flat.

They tried way to hard to satirise D&D without hitting the target. At least, I hope it was a satire -- please tell me it is a satire? If we, the audience, is supposed to take this as a serious D&D story, that doesn't say much for D&D.

If you are expecting a fun ensemble action-comedy romp like Guardians of the Galaxy, or an affectionate parody of the source material like Galaxy Question, you're going to be horribly disappointed.

The Ugly

The plot was awful. The script was awful. The dialog was awful. The backstory exposition probably only lasted ten minutes but my god it felt like an hour and despite everything Chris Pine could do it was boring as hell.

At no point in the movie did I find myself engaged in the quest, hoping they would succeed, or caring for any of the characters.

The cast utterly failed to have any chemistry between them. Even Chris Pine couldn't save it.

The whole subplot about Edgin's daughter and dead wife was lame as fuck and unnecessary, and the "your real family is the friends you met on the way!" parable was just clumsily done.

The movie went on and on and on way too long, it could have and should have been much tighter.

The big gladiatorial battle was just silly.

The cliched subplot about Simon the wizard ("you can do it if only you believe in yourself!") felt like something written by 12 year olds for six year olds.

So many terrible names."Xenk Yendar", "Szass Tam", "Mordenkainen", "Themberchaud". Who makes up this shit?

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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Also the 'heroes' are bumbling nincompoops, not epic at all. The only character that seemed like a proper D&D hero was the Paladin played by Rege-Jean Page who was not part of the main party. What exactly does Chris Pine do? He hit a guy with his guitar (lute? idk) once, he appears to have no spellcasting or combat abilities of any sort. This does not look like a D&D hero from any game I have ever played

Though I suppose it was still technically 'the best' D&D movie i've seen due to at least having a decent production budget. But like, what the fuck was with the fat dragon? That was incredibly lame. Some of the writing was god-awful, but you covered most of that

[–]Canbot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

He hit a guy with his guitar (lute? idk) once

He's a white guy. Naturally they were going to make him a fool. For what hollywood has become he was less of a fool than I expected.

[–]zyxzevn 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

..felt like something written by 12 year olds for six year olds.
The whole movie in one sentence.

[–]Maggotus 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Better than the D&D movies that came before it, but still not that good.

[–]SierraKiloBravo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the review! I'm not a D&D fan but it looked kinda fun but also like it was the usual modern fantasy (lazy characters, basic story, rubbish effects). Glad I gave it a miss!

[–]Canbot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I give this review a 2 out of 5

If you are expecting a fun ensemble action-comedy romp like Guardians of the Galaxy... you're going to be horribly disappointed.

Total miss. I thought it had a very GotG vibe.

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]weavilsatemyface[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    a fantasy analogue of Medieval Europe.

    Ah, so there should be plenty of Moors, Gypsies, north Africans, Mediterranean peoples, near Middle Eastern types, Turks, Egyptians and even (by the end of the medieval period) black Africans. Got you.

    You: "No no no, I'm not talking about the real historical medieval Europe, I'm talking about the imaginary fantasy of medieval Europe in my head where nobody took Muslim slaves from North Africa to work on their farms, never engaged with trade between northern and southern Europe, nobody ever travelled from Italy or Spain, or went on Crusades, and everybody looked like an SS recruiting poster!!!"

    If you have problems with the writing it's because the primary goal of the film was to BLACK the Realms

    Oh dear, somebody is butthurt about there being people with dark skins 😄

    I'm pretty sure the primary goal of the film was to make a shit-ton of money. And I had problems with the writing because the writing was cliched and poor, not because a few of the cast members were dark skinned.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]weavilsatemyface[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      Europe was nearly 100 percent European

      It really wasn't.

      There were tens of thousands of north African and Middle Eastern slaves during the middle ages, at a time when the whole population of Europe was measured in the millions. For 700 years or so, Spain was ruled in whole or in part by Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East.

      Let's not forget the Huns, a multi-ethnic nomadic culture whose people had origins in the central Eurasian steppes and Iran, as far east as China. Or the Mongols, who invaded Europe multiple times, and although they did not stay, men being men and rape being common in war, they left Mongol DNA all through the parts of Europe they invaded.

      Earlier, in Roman times, the empire had many thousands of brown-skinned North Africans, Middle Easterners, and black-skinned Africans legionnaires, and Rome sent them all over the empire. There were black Africans, what the Romans called "Ethiopeans", serving as soldiers in emperor Septimius Severus' army as far north as Hadrian's Wall. Septimus himself was a dark-skinned north African. Another emperor, Philip the Arab, was a Syrian Arab.

      jewish meddling

      "OMG! OMG! THE JOOS!? 😲 RUN FER THE HILLS BOYS! THEY'RE A COMIN' FER YA!"

      [–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      Opinion seems divided on the movie. Seems to have about 93% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes from the audience, and 90% from critics.

      So many terrible names."Xenk Yendar", "Szass Tam", "Mordenkainen", "Themberchaud". Who makes up this shit?

      I don't recognise the others, but Mordenkainen was a Gary Gygax character going back to 1973.

      Edit: The others are forgotten realms characters.

      [–]weavilsatemyface[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Such terrible names. Almost as bad as George Lucas' names for Star Wars characters after the original movie.

      (I have a tiny suspicion that the reason Star Wars was so amazing and everything that followed was ... less amazing ... is that Lucas' ex-wife had a major uncredited role in writing the first but not the others.)

      [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      I saw it in the theater and promptly forgot I saw it. It was okay but obviously forgettable.

      [–]Arewethereyet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      It would have been better had they just made it a non-DnD movie set in a fantasy setting. The only real thing that they seemed to use was the names of the locations, the harpers, and the red wizards. No Bard spells.

      [–]Ludditebardd 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      I thought it was a much better flick then that. The acting was mostly good ( I didn't really like the female Druid, but that is partly subpsr writing), the plot was good, the subplots were either OK or just uninteresting. The action was mostly CGI like all newer movies, which is getting old. But it was a good movie that didn't try to cram diversity, women can do it while men can't, minorities are the only truly virtuous people type of tropes. At least 4 1/2 out of 5 for me.