Based on the wildly successful tabletop roleplaying game, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” follows the story of a rag-tag group of thieves forming an alliance to steal a mysterious object with some hijinks strung throughout. If that sounds extremely cliché and derivative, it’s because the film is exactly that: cliché and derivative.
To preface this review, I have absolutely zero knowledge of the “Dungeons & Dragons” game itself or its lore. My knowledge of the game extends as far as knowing it is set in medieval times and contains fantasy elements. I am judging this film solely based on the cinematic experience that it brings to the table (no pun intended).
Starting with my positives, the film certainly looks like a 151-million-dollar production. Though that might sound like obvious praise, I promise that it is not exactly the norm in these big-budget blockbuster films as of late. Though there are a couple of instances of iffy-looking CGI in the final fight sequence, there is some impressive VFX throughout the film. The environments created look quite a bit better than some of the latest Marvel and DC entries.
The overall look and aesthetic of the film are admittedly pretty great. If there is one thing that the film does abundantly well, it’s nailing the medieval fantasy aesthetic. The practical set design blends extremely well for the most part with the CGI elements used to create the many different settings traveled throughout the film.
That’s about as far as my positives go, however. If I had to choose a word to describe “Dungeons & Dragons,” it would be dissonant. Particularly, the tone and dialogue feel disjointed throughout the film’s overly long runtime.
Beginning with the dialogue, it feels as if the four-man writing crew, consisting of co-directors, Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley, couldn’t decide on the type of dialogue they wanted to have. There are moments throughout the film where the characters are spouting off dialect that one would expect from a film in a medieval setting. However, given the writers’ gross over-reliance on quippy banter, the characters suddenly begin speaking like they are in a modern film.
Even if you are to ignore the extremely odd decision to use modern-day humor and quips hand-in-hand with medieval and fantastical dialogue, the humor simply feels tiring. It’s very Marvel-esque, complete with the most obvious setups to jokes. Many of the film’s “jokes” end up being characters commenting on what happened in a semi-sarcastic tone. “Dungeons & Dragons” feels like it is desperately trying to feel like a Marvel film instead of creating a unique tone with its deep source material.
Adding to the feeling of dissonance, the horror elements present are implemented extremely poorly. There are some effective sequences of fantastical horror akin to the “Harry Potter” franchise. However, they are so few and far between in the film that they simply feel like an afterthought. This mainly has to do with the aforementioned over-reliance and dedication to making this film an adventure-comedy. It’s a baffling decision to me to make this an adventure-comedy when the game itself does not seem to focus much on humor at all.
“Dungeons & Dragons” was simply an exhausting experience in the worst way possible. The film’s excellent look and overall aesthetic are wasted on a laughably bad script. The characters are cliché, the plot is derivative and the jokes are painfully unfunny and poorly written. If you are a fan of the game, I recommend giving it a chance. If you are not familiar with the game, then I absolutely recommend skipping this one.
4/10
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