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DVD Dungeons & Dragons (New Line Platinum Series)
There is trouble in Izmer. With the emperor dead from an assassin's poison, the 16-year-old princess Savina (Thora Birch) inherits not just the throne but also the royal scepter, which has the power to command gold dragons. With a youthful idealism, she decides all people should be equal, from lowly commoners to the ruling-class, magic-wielding mages. This doesn't sit well with the mages, so Archmage Profion (Jeremy Irons) leads a revolt in the Council against Savina's rule, forcing her to relinquish the royal scepter. In order to maintain her power, she decides she needs the rod of Savrille, which can control red dragons. To retrieve it, she hires two bumbling thieves, Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans), and an apprentice mage (Zoe McLellan). The true trouble in Izmer is the fact that it's a poorly imagined world that cribs more from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark than it does from the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game that shares its title. Director Courtney Solomon optioned the rights to the game in 1991, when he was 21, and should have spent the years since then drafting a coherent script. Mediocre special effects take precedence over story, and the actors try to make up for that by hamming it up. Irons, in particular, covers his embarrassment by chewing the scenery and spitting it out. Often unintentionally funny, Dungeons & Dragons is that fun kind of bad movie, whose cult status would be all but guaranteed if it weren't for a slow second act mired in the boring bumbling of the awkward thieves. Still, there are plenty of laughs to be had. --Andy Spletzer
Review(s): DVD Dungeons & Dragons (New Line Platinum Series)
I'd like to be nice
...but it's hard to find much positive to say about this movie. Jeremy Irons must have needed the money, but at least he gurns his way through this in a professional fashion; his sidekick can at least do vaguely menacing, although it must have been hard not to giggle when the blue lipstick went on.
The lead characters are drawn with all the subtlety one would expect of a man who has been allowed to write the script with red crayons on the back of some old wallpaper. They are by turns, appallingly naff and simply appalling. Marlon Wayans manages a new low in eye-rolling sidekickness. When one 'hero' is thrown from a tower by a blue-lipsticked villain, I found myself cheering for the Forces of Darkness.
However, if bad movies are your thing, there are bits to savour and enjoy: Tom Baker's wonderful slice of ham as the Elf King (surely the lardiest elf in the history of the world!) and Richard O'Brien's splendidly camp performance as the master of the Thieves' Guild are there to treasure. Feel the love at these points, because you'll want to stab yourself in the face with forks during the rest.
I've seen worse
"Dungeons and Dragons" isn't a great movie, but despite the complaints you'll hear about it, it's certainly not the worst of a lackluster genre.
OK, the sound man should be flogged -- I couldn't understand a word in either the beginning or ending segments with the dragons -- and the script needed to be something beyond a first draft, with recognizable motivations, less exposition and decent dialogue added. And someone wake Thora Birch up: She seems to have slipped into some sort of sleepwalking coma.
Having said that, the "Dungeons & Dragons" movie wasn't as horrible as I'd heard it made out to be. It was surely better than "Krull" or "The Sword and the Sorcerer." I'd rank it right below "Willow" and around the level of "Dragonheart": amateurish, kind of cheesy, but not offensively so.
There was some neat stuff in the movie. Well, neatish. Many of the characters, most notably Ridley certainly looked the part, and the computer-generated capital city was pretty excellent in all the pointlessly fast flyby shots. And I thought the dungeon sequences were handled reasonably well.
Courtney Solomon put "Dungeons & Dragons" together without the benefit of a real grounding in film, other than "parents in the film industry," which qualifies him to work at Starbucks, honestly. And it shows. But the film, if clumsy, also shows a real love of the source material that redeems most of its flaws.
You want to see a really bad fantasy movie? Check out "First Knight." Compared to that, this is Shakespeare.
Worth renting for families looking for light entertainment, and maybe owning for someone REALLY passionate about the "Dungeons & Dragons" game.
the best game and movie ever!
Don't believe a word anyone else says. They think this movie is crud... but I know better -- it's the best! The characters are a little obvious and my favorite character gets backstabbed, but apart from those flaws it's right up there with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So far, I think that the company who makes it (new line cinema) has sold about a million copies. It's unfair that nlc has sold so few and you should go out and do something about it. Thank you for reading this review. Goodbye.
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