:::Hangs head in disappointment::: Where does one even start!
You know those sword and sorcery fantasy movies of the 80's with interchangeable titles that usually contain "wizard" or "quest" or "warrior" in the title? That you watch on cable some late night and think "Yikes, how cheesy! What a B-movie." Then you find out during the ending credits that it was made in Argentina? And you think "Wow! For coming from a country that I didn't even know had a film industry, I guess it's not bad." Well, Dungeons & Dragons is like that, except it doesn't have the excuse of being made in a South American country.
I feel really bad for being disappointed, as I've been playing the role-playing game since I was 8. Twenty-two years of being in love with this game, so I was really hoping for a movie I can be proud of.
In brief, it tells the story of a couple of common thieves who get caught up into an empire's political intrigue when they run into a mage apprentice with a map that tells where one can find a rod that controls red dragons. Make sense? Pretty simple story. We have a young Empress coming into her own with grand, revolutionary ideas, and an evil magician who wants to control it all. And to stop him are the partnered thieves, a mercenary dwarf (who's not very much of a dwarf!) the apprentice mage, and an elvin ranger. Nice setup for a good action story, but here are what hurt it all!
The music was ridiculously conspicuous! Everywhere all the time, telling you exactly what you're supposed to feel. As if the makers didn't trust the movie to communicate on its own. Which I guess I understand since the script was superficial at best and the acting even more so. The characters weren't deep enough to even be 2-dimensional. With one exception where the hero, Ridley, and the apprentice Marina share a touching moment, no one diverts from their stock, stereotyped characterizations. And Thora Birch's performance as the young Empress really disappointed me. After the wonderful performance she gave in American Beauty, she looked like she was in a high school play here. Natalie Portman just barely pulled it off as the Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I, Thora just doesn't have the presence to play anything other than a moody teenager.
But then, it's kind of hard to bring to believable life a script that has lines like "Why don't you pick on someone your own size," and "We cannot go with him; this is something he must do alone," when there was absolutely no cause for such a mystical line, and my favorite: "That's the thing with you thieves, always taking what isn't yours." Unless I'm mistaken, you can't really BE a thief if you don't take others' things, right? But I have to say my favorite moment, one that actually made me stifle cackling, was when the evil "bad guy" played by Jeremy Irons says "Your majesty" in just the same way he did as Scar in The Lion King! Maybe it's just me, but I think the moment I found out Jeremy Irons was going to say that line, I'd do some editing. However, I did enjoy his general cheesiness. He looked like he was enjoying the part and realized the eventual silliness of the movie as a whole, so just had fun with his character.
As for being faithful to the game that inspired the movie, I'd have to say it had its ups and downs. On the one hand the spells and some of the creatures seemed to come from the game, but in general it was pretty different. The gold dragons breathed fire, which they don't in the game, the floating balls of eyes known as "beholders" were like watchdogs when in the game they're highly intelligent mages, and there were several non-human races seen that I have never seen described in any game material. In fact, one scene in a tavern looked more like the Star Wars cantina on Tatooine than a D&D world tavern.
Speaking of the spirit of the game that fathered the movie, there's no party atmosphere! No, I don't mean like a frat house. In Dungeons & Dragons, players gather together to play a generally cooperative party of characters that overcome obstacles and join together to seek adventure. Everything that happens in this movie happens primarily to the main character Ridley, alone, sometimes with his partner Snails and once with the rather cute apprentice. When he had to traverse the trap-filled maze (which was WAY too simple,) when he had to get the map back from the bald baddie with blue lips, half the party stayed behind due to some script mandated crypticness, and when he had to get the rod from the dungeon, a wall of force prevented all but him from entering. And that is blasphemy. The only instance when there's an actual dungeon, only one person goes in encounters one trap, and then bingo! He's in the treasure room. Sad sad sad....
And by the way, before I forget, where the heck did all the dragons come from and why?? The climax of the movie involves a huge aerial battle between flocks of gold and red dragons. Why? Such a huge battle was barely mentioned previously and not even close to adequately motivated. My guess is that some producer liked the idea and so the writers had to fit it in somehow. Of course! You have a fantasy movie that includes "dragon" in the title, and you have all these powerful Apple or SG computers to do neato graphics with, you should have a dragon war! Would have worked if the movie had about an extra hour to motivate and build up to such an event and a script that made it believable.
And finally, the end. I won't ruin a major plot point by going into the setting or reason for the hero's gathering at the end, but something odd at the end happens. Which at first is great, giving a sort of Search For Spock motivation for a sequel, but then something weirder happens that made me wonder "OK, so the sequel will begin on another plane of existence." Then finally the weirdest thing happens and I thought "Well damn, I have no excuse for that!" Must have been another computer graphic they wanted to use.
Category: Movie
Genre: Fantasy
Date Reviewed: 2000-01-01
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Rating: 2