Review: Dungeons and Dragons
"Adventure hinges on more than just a throw of the dice." Uh huh.Rating: 2 / 10
This may very well be quite a long review, as I'd like to try to list all the incredibly fucken awful parts about it that I can remember.
The movie opens with a travelling through clouds sequence over which a voice tells us the way things are in the world of Izmer. The Empress Savina (Thora Birch) wishes to change the social order of the land (by decree, it seems) so as to move from an aristocracy of mages ruling over the commoners and being tyranical and stroking one another's cocks and all the things that aristocrats do, to a situation in which all people are considered "equal". Also we get a brief mention of how the mages think it's a bad idea.
Now, at no point do we discover what she thinks her role in all of this will be, but we can assume that's mostly because she's so incredibly dense that she hasn't thought past the (horribly american) catchphrase of "all people equal". Of course she gets her way in the end, the americans always do, but the sequel would be a much more interesting story.
As we leave the clouds (sorry, did I wander a little? Go up a couple of paragraphs), we find ourselves headed toward a very pretty CG scene. Floating about the place viewing structures from different angles and getting a nice flyover of a rivery bit of water, we suddenly enter a dark, dank place, presumably some kind of sewer, in which we find the most distinguished of all mages, who, learning from his mistake, is never again at an elevation of fewer than 100 feet above land. He is courteous enough to explain to us the way things are in the world of Izmer, and how he, as a mage and aristocrat, thinks that the Empress' plans (which he also reiterates) are a bad idea.
We are also introduced to his throat cancer ridden henchman, who was apparently suffering from colour blindness when he chose his lipstick. Possibly suffering from a tendency toward cross dressing, also.
Profion attempts to control a dragon he just happened to have locked up behind a wooden door (HELLO?), of course he fails to do it, and he has to kill the dragon, and ends up accidentally setting fire to the sewery river I mentioned earlier. Makes you wonder what the hell these people eat.
The burning river (worst CG since the early 90s) causes rage and hatred and bad dialogue to spew forth from the main character Ridley Freeborn (Justin Whalin), and stupidity and worse dialogue from his sidekick Snails (Chris Roc.. I mean Marlon Wayans) .. They decide the best thing to do about it is break in to the school of magic and steal things. This is not only intended to explain to us that these characters are of the class "Thief", but also that they are of the subclass "Moron".
Enough of the character introductions, let's get into plot development!!
We cut to an exceptionally underpopulated room which appears to be some kind of parliament. The majority of this bit is just Profion explaining to the parliament the way things are in the world of Izmer, what the Empress thinks should happen to everything, and how he, as a mage, thinks it's a bit of a bad idea. He also has the good sense to explain to the parliament that they think it's a bad idea also. This is pretty handy for Profiterole, because it means that when he suggests they vote to take away her big dragon controlling stick, they all think that it's a terrific idea and do it.
Next scene, the Empress' chief magish advisor explains that the best way to thwart the plans of Prophilactic are to get a sceptre which he describes as having "All the same powers as yours, but with one special extra. It has the power to control red dragons!" .. Now, given that her current one can control gold dragons, you'd think from that description that the new one can control both gold AND red, right? Don't be so fucken stupid.
Profanity, being the smartest character in the film except the talking skeleton, has one of his spies report back on this conversation and decides that he too must get his extremities on this sceptre. So, after explaining how things are in the world of Izmer, and how he thinks that the Empress' plans are a pretty bad idea, he sends Damodar (Yul Brynner) to learn the old mage a lesson. Another good move, given that if he wasn't taken out he'd probably be perfectly capable of solving the whole thing himself. This all takes place while the librarian Marina (Zoe McLellan) is off checking out the noises made by Fucko and Dicko as they break in upstairs to get some experience points and gold. So, of course, she is spared the fate that befalls her master and finds herself in possession of the map (readable only by coachbuilders) that tells where the red sceptre can be found and what magical items are required to get to it.
At this point, you're probably thinking "Is he gonna recite the whole fucken movie or what?" and I'm happy to say, I'm not. The reason I went through the first five minutes of the movie in such relatively great detail is that I wanted you to get a feel for how much like a REAL game of Dungeons and Dragons this movie really is. Imaginative but completely lacking detail, very badly thought out, but with a couple of "That'll be cool!" events that seriously fail to work in any way whatsoever. Even the character names sound like they're straight off a real character sheet.
Who knows how Thora Birch made her way from screwing the deviant (and absentmindedly not having lesbian sex with Mena Suvari) in American Beauty to being the Queen Amidala wanna-be in this film, but it was a hell of a step backwards.
I mentioned the CG already. Some of it is nice but nothing special, other parts are really awful, but the most annoying part of any of it is that every time we see a CG cityscape we are flown through it in a dramatic fashion.. Flying between columns, under bridges, all that. The first time, it's fine. The second time, it's "Huh?" and every time after that, it's "not another fucken 30 seconds taken up with flying around this fucking scene again!", the thinking of which fortunately takes your mind off the actual CG.
Now, as somebody who played a total of about 5 games of D&D a few years ago, I have a rudimentary understanding of how the character classes work. Roughly. So, the severe deviation of the characters from what their classes would suggest they would be able to do within the normal game is actually something of a distraction. Probably this wouldn't be the case for the casual observer of the film, but I found it seriously annoying that the main character, a thief, occasionally had footsteps as loud as his inappropriate chatter while attempting to stealth his way through a dungeon, and that despite this clumsiness, he was such a brilliant fighter with a sword that he made all the fighter class characters look amateur. You really tend to wonder where the hell the story's headed. It keeps hinting at big things but nothing ever comes of it. At one point some litte men with sheep attached even go so far as to talk to each other about Ridley's potential, but other than being the only one able to walk through a magic force field (which conveniently allows the other characters to be captured, thus facilitating the continuance of the film) and being able to hold the big plastic stick, he doesn't display any particularly special powers whatsoever. It's perplexing. I am terribly perplexed.
While mentioning the fighting, I'd like to mention the awful incongruity of the violence. This was an M rated movie with no titties or swearing, due to the violence inflicted by characters upon other characters.. These include having your brains sucked by snakes, having a sword stabbed a few inches into your shoulder in order to torture you, having your shoulder dislocated and then being run through with a bunch of spikes before being thrown off a building, being a dragon that lands back first on the pointy end of a cathedral, and just about anything else you can think of.. Yet, from time to time the characters would simply knock each other about, even going so far at one point as to depict a dwarf thumping somebody on the forehead with the flat of his battleaxe and not pausing to finish the guy off despite the lack of imminent danger from anywhere other than the guy. You constantly get the feeling you're watching a kids movie, yet if you take your kids to see this you're a seriously irresponsible parent. In an impressive likening of the characers to fans of the game, every character has an obvious retardation. Admittedly many of them share the same ailment, that of taking an american approach to all their tasks, but many other impedences really have you scratching your head. Like the aristocrat mage Marina who if in a real game would've been ejected from the party long ago. When she witnesses an elderly Elf performing a healing spell on Ridley she is utterly shocked. So much as to ask "How did you do that?".. as if that isn't odd enough, she then marvels at the revelation that Elves needn't utter spells in order to use magic. This girl is the "promising student" librarian of the school of magic and she marvels at a healing spell? These are the sors of things that just don't sit well.
One of the few redeeming aspects of the film was the costumes. They all looked really good with the exception of the Elf, whose appearence prompted in me the thought "You'll have somebody's eye out!". Her armour looked as thought she'd have been lucky if it stopped a high speed insect from doing her a mischief, though if the insect were male it would no doubt have been distracted long enough for her to get out of its way.
Awful awful makeup. Some of the masks were even wobbling on the head of the wearer. Many props were obviously plastic, and even the magic sword given to Ridley (and hardly used, of course) was, despite its importance, obviously incapable of putting a dent in a loaf of bread. Nevermind if it were dwarf bread..
All in all, a fucken terrible movie. Really bad. Don't even see it on video.
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