Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a movie that so desperately knows what it wants to be, which is to follow in the very same footsteps of many a Marvel Movie before it.  It sticks slavishly to the popular formula, mixing spectacle and special effects with a smart aleck know it all sense of humor, that I ultimately saw it as nothing more than an imitation.  Rather than carve out its own identity, it simply wants to do what it knows is popular with current audiences.

It's not just the overly familiar formulaic structure of the film that bothered me, mind you.  The plot is laughably simplistic, the villains are virtually non-existent for a majority of the run time and leave no impression whatsoever, and the gags the writers do come up with are so predictable I was even able to see the set up for the mid-credit gag as soon as it was established.  And yet, everybody in this movie is definitely trying, and I admired a lot of the performances.  Or, perhaps I should say, I'd admire them in a different movie, because very few of them came across to me like they were supposed to be in a fantasy film.  Some talk in modern day slang, while some seem to have wandered in from a completely different movie and look lost.

Take our lead heroes, Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez).  I never for a minute believed they were supposed to be the leads of this particular movie, because they don't even act like they're starring in a fantasy epic. Pine as  Edgin is constantly shooting off quips left and right like your modern day sarcastic action hero, and seems to be playing to the audience instead of inhabiting a plot.  Rodriguez, meanwhile, has the role where she acts like your standard video game heroine, smashing the heads of various faceless bad guys, while never once breaking a sweat or damaging her hair and make up.  They break out of prison in an opening that is very dragged out and snarky in its humor.  They're in jail in the first place because they're a pair of thieves who got betrayed by one of their band, the smarmy Forge, who is played by Hugh Grant, and basically gives the same charming yet buffoonish villain performance he gave in Paddington 2.  

After they are free, they set off on a quest to find a resurrection tablet, which Edgin wants to use to bring back his dearly departed wife, whose death led to him taking on a life of thievery in the first place.  He also has a young daughter (Chloe Coleman) who is being held by the slimy Forge, who has poisoned her mind so that she hates her father for abandoning her years ago.  There's also a group of Red Wizards who want to wipe out all humanity, but they figure much less into the plot than you would expect.  The movie is really all about Edgin and his pals getting into one comically sticky situation after another as they search for the tablet.  Joining them is a sorcerer suffering from self-esteem issues when it comes to magic (Justice Smith)  and a shape-shifting druid (Sophia Lillis).  The movie constantly brings up how the sorcerer once asked the druid out, but failed, leading us to expect a romantic subplot, but it never really goes anywhere of note.

This is a movie that's been designed top to bottom as a crowd pleasing entertainment, but what the filmmakers have forgotten to do is put in a little something special that the audience has never seen.  It's so focused on emulating popular trends and humor that it forgets to forge any kind of identity of its own.  Dungeons & Dragons is likable, but with a movie like John Wick: Chapter 4 likely playing in the exact same building, that's just not enough.  I kept on waiting for the movie to step up its game and impress me, and instead found a likable cast floundering in a plot that is hardly there.  Again, I bring up the Red Wizards who, I repeat, want to wipe out all humanity.  And yet, the character who represents them (Daisy Head) matters so little in the grand scheme until the climax that I almost forgot she was in the film.  I also found it curious when one of the characters seemingly suffered a mortal wound in the final battle, when I don't remember it even happening during the actual battle.  Maybe I missed something?

I have no doubt that the movie will "win the weekend" and inspire the franchise it's aiming for.  I actually wouldn't mind seeing these people in a sequel.  Just give them a plot worth giving a damn about next time around, and maybe give them an actual story to inhabit where they don't stand around making snarky one liners to one another to hide the fact that the writers forgot to give them one.

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