Dungeons & Dragons

Starring: Jeremy Irons, Justin Whalin, Bruce Payne, Marlon Wayans, Zoe McLellan, Thora Birch, Lee Arenberg, Kristen Wilson
Directed by: Courtney Solomon
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Action
2000

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: A thief (Justin Whalin) teams with a mage (Zoe McLellan) to stop an evil sorcerer (Jeremy Irons) from taking over the land.

Review:

Tim: The first time I saw Dungeons & Dragons, I was pretty young. Even in my youth, I expected a pretty poor movie. What surprised me is that I actually enjoyed it more than I expected. Fast forward years later, after I started The Movie Files, and I had to go back and watch this movie again. Unfortunately, the shine was definitely off it at this point. This movie is incredibly flawed, and I didn't care for it much at all. What's surprising is that I read other reviews from people (not critics), who shared similar stories- they kinda liked it the first time, hated it the second.

I tried to put myself in a similar mindset to the first time I saw the film, but was unable to. I've learned far too much about movies since then, and I could not ignore the myriad flaws present in every aspect of this movie. I wanted to like this movie, to get back to that place where I was pleasantly surprised, but alas, I could not.

The story is pretty weak. It has been done before, and it just feels silly. I will say that I like the basic structure of our hero and his best friend meeting a pretty girl, and joining forces to stop the villain. That structure can work and be enjoyable. Unfortunately, the film never fully capitalizes on any of these opportunities.

Justin Whalin was average in the lead role. He's clearly not a great actor, and his shortcomings show up continually throughout the film. Marlon Wayans was about 100 times more over-the-top than he needed to be. He was so unbelievably annoying. Every time he'd scream, I would cringe. I hated Wayans in this film. Jeremy Irons was really slumming it, and he knew it, too. His performance is so absurd, there's no doubt he was here to collect a paycheck only. Zoe McLellan was average, and she will certainly not have much of a career in Hollywood. Thora Birch basically sleepwalked through her whole performance. The entire cast was lackluster.

My biggest problem is how stupid the whole movie was. Let me give some examples. Whalin and Wayans break into a magic school or something. Okay, they are professional thieves, I buy it. The break-in is one of the worst I've ever seen. They are incredibly, unnecessarily loud, talk to each other instead of being secretive, play around, and act like the whole thing is a huge joke. Why do this? It completely negates any sense of suspense we might feel. It ruined the scene, and it made these two look like bumbling idiots. We have multiple characters who serve absolutely no purpose- the dwarf who joins the quest for no apparent reason, and the boring elf woman, who does nothing of any substance in the whole movie. The script felt like a rushed, lazy, inadequate, half-finished mess that was pushed into production.

The special effects are below average. I'm not going to focus too much on this, because I understand limited budgets, but the movie really could have used a little more money to improve the effects. There's a few times when it looks particularly bad. This isn't to say that the movie is completely worthless. There are some scenes that worked. Seeing Whalin break into the thieves' maze was a pretty cool scene. The final battle between Wayans and the villain is memorable. There's a few cute romantic moments between Whalin and McLellan. The massive dragon battle at the end is actually pretty cool, except when we focus on the humans (the dragons-on-dragons battle is impressive).

Still, the positives are completely overshadowed by the many flaws in this film. Despite trying to remind myself of what I liked about this movie, I just disliked it completely. It's such a poorly made film, and it's oftentimes a trainwreck.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend:
The Lord of the Rings, Eragon