Rating: C+
Dir: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Star: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Sophia Lillis, Justice Smith
There is no real reason why a Dungeons & Dragons movie needs to a) have a budget north of $150 million, or b) run for 134 minutes. Say what you like about the original D&D film – and there is plenty of room for criticism – it was less than one-third of the cost (albeit back in 2000) and half an hour shorter. The price tag is surprising, considering Pine is the only name who’d cost much in this cast. Rodriguez can be had for little more than the cost of an open bar tab these days, and the only other “name” is Hugh Grant, who can be had for the cost of [redacted on the advice of the Film Blitz legal department].
I get that a D&D movie might need a fully-detailed fantasy realm, though it’s ironic, given the game is almost entirely about using your imagination. To recapture the true feeling of the game, it should have been made on a table-top with 28mm miniatures. For bonus accuracy, add increasingly irritated narration, as the DM gets annoyed by the party’s refusal to follow his carefully prepared scenario: “Are you sure you want to have sex with the sleeping troll?” [On Amazon, this film is rated PG-13 for “alcohol use and foul language”, which accurately summarizes every D&D session I’ve played] But, no, here we need to see dragons and wizards and owlbears, oh my, to varying effect. The best moment is probably an artfully crafted one-shot of a character’s escape from a castle, not the endless, very expensive finale in a giant arena.
The storyline is generic quest. A character needs the Tablet of X, but to get get it, they first have to acquire the Staff of Y, Helmet of Z, and assorted other artifacts AA through AZ. The party is almost cynically diverse – unlike the game where, as I recall, you typically ended up with four barbarians and a very overworked cleric. Here, there’s bard Edgin Darvis (Pine), undersized barbarian Holga Kilgore (Rodriguez), shapeshifting druid Doric (Lillis), and Simon (Smith), a wizard with self-confidence issues. They all appear more or less chaotic good in alignment, and get along. Again, this goes counter to my experience: the common tongue was “bickering” and there was always that one guy, trying to poison everyone.
It’s good in parts, though fewer of them than I’d want given the length. There’s a nice bit where they keep resurrecting corpses for information, only for there to be… issues. However, it feels less like a D&D movie, then a Guardians of the Galaxy script where someone did a search and replace. Pine in particular feels as if the makers got sent the wrong Chris due to a shipping error, when they cast their likeable yet largely useless hero. There are reasons I’m uninterested in GotG, and by the end here, my interest had to make a saving throw against petrification. Though if I was Edgin’s dead wife, I’d be kinda pissed at the final outcome.