Movie Poster

Just like you thieves, always taking things that don't belong to you.

# Review

Although I’ve never actually played an actual game of D&D, I have played some of the spinoff video games. I wanted to watch the latest D&D movie but thought I’d watch the earlier ones first. This is the first live-action D&D movie and it tells the story of Ridley (Justin Whalin), a thief who gets caught in the schemes of Profion (Jeremy Irons), an evil wizard trying to take over the kingdom of Izmer.

I knew this film wasn’t going to be amazing but I was not prepared for how bad it is. Despite the relatively large budget, this film feels like a backyard movie shot by D&D fans. The plot is extremely generic and the dialogue is laughably bad. The film feels like it was written with very young children in mind, as the dialogue goes into great lengths to explicitly explain everything. The acting is mediocre around the board. Some of the side characters, such as Richard O'Brien’s Xilus, Marlon Wayans’ Snails, and Bruce Payne’s Damodar, were pretty fun despite the bad script. Other characters, such as Zoe McLellan’s Marina and Thora Birch’s Empress Savina, were just awful. Second to the script is the bad CGI, which must’ve felt dated even by 2000 standards. The costumes also looked like they were purchased from Spirit Halloween.

Despite all of its shortcomings, the film was a fun bad film. It’s clear that the cast, such as Irons and Wayans, was having fun filming this.

# Conclusion

A film stuck in development hell and it shows.

# Overall rating: 6.2

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