#93 Dungeons and Dragons (Wes)

#93 Dungeons and Dragons

“Hey look a Dungeons and Dragons ride!” Upon hearing these words on my TV as a kid I’d be sat down in a flash and glued to my TV for twenty minutes. I absolutely loved this cartoon and having watched it back as an adult recently I still really enjoyed it, so you can imagine my trepidation at approaching this movie. Thankfully this movie contains none of the characters from the classic eighties cartoon, but unfortunately it doesn’t have the magic that made the cartoon work so well either.

Very loosely based on the role playing game, this movie is set in the empire of Izmir where the mages rule and oppress the commoners making them little more than slaves, evil mage Profion (Jeremy Irons) wants to take control of the empire for himself. To do this he creates a sceptre that can control gold dragons, but the dragon he tries it on breaks free from the spell. Defending her role and fighting against his views is Empress Savina (Thora Birch), who wants to free the commoners and stop Profion’s evil schemes. Meanwhile two thieves Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans), break into the magic school where they are caught by Marina (Zoe McLellan) who nearly gets killed by Profion’s henchman Damodar (Bruce Payne) but escapes with the two thieves and a map to find the Rod of Savrille (which can control red dragons). What follows is a series of adventures with dwarfs, elves, dragons and Richard O’Brian as our heroes try to find the rod before Profion does and save the empire. I tried rolling a d20 to skip the rest of the movie, but I rolled a 5 and ended up having to watch it twice...

At first you may look at the cast and think there’s some promise there, and I’d completely agree with you. However... Jeremy Irons is usually a great actor, and is no stranger to playing the bad guy (I thought he was brilliant in Die Hard with a Vengeance), but in this movie he’s so acting is so hammy that it’s as if he’s just walked off the set of the McDonalds movie, where he was playing the part of The Hamburglar. Thora Birch is ok, but she seems to be channelling Carrie Fisher playing Princess Leia in Star Wars (perhaps more accurately you could say she’s a lot like Natalie Portman in The Phantom Menace, but with the ability to show a little emotion) and Justin Whalin seems only capable of playing the same role he did in The New Adventures of Superman (Jimmy Olsen).

The worst member of the cast is Marlon Wayans who is just irritating as the unfortunately named Snails. He’s just not funny in this movie, even though he’s meant to be the comic relief. He wouldn’t seem out of place in the 1941 zombie film King of the Zombies. His acting is reminiscent of Mantan Moreland as the scaredy cat Jefferson Jackson, which may have been fine in the 40s, but now comes across as an outdated racial stereotype.

The film also has one of the campest villains since Ming the Merciless last graced the silver screen. Dadomar, who for some reason wears a pale blue lipstick that just adds to his campness, makes Richard O’Brian look as butch as Mad Max. In fact he’s so camp, that he would make the perfect venue for a man in a hockey mask to kill promiscuous teenagers in. His attempts at being menacing had me in stitches, and when Profion infects him with a Wrath of Khan like brain parasite, his pained expressions just look like they belong in an advert for stomach pain relief.

The world itself looks ok, but has a very low budget CGI look to it, compare this to The Fellowship of the Ring and it’s lush surroundings and you can see why this realm of fantasy was quickly forgotten, whilst the slightly later Lord of the Rings movies are still hugely popular. Unfortunately for a movie called Dungeons and DRAGONS even the dragons have a cheap look to them and you can’t help but compare them to the dragons in the movie Reign of Fire who at least looked like they may have belonged on the screen. But worst of all are the terrible backgrounds added behind the actors. Not since the TV show Land of the Giants has something looked so cut out and pasted on in such an unconvincing manner.

The major fault with this movie is that it has a terrible script that rips off so many other movies that you just find yourself wanting to watch them instead. They do this at the expense of neglecting the books and the world which had been built around the game in its 26 years of existence before this movie was released. Which in itself is a strange thing, surely the writers would have been better off trying to make it closer to the role-playing game that this is supposedly based on? After all the people most likely to see this movie would be the thousands of gamers over the world, who all seem to revile this movie.

However this movie does have one redeeming feature that lifts it from mediocrity into the dizzying heights of greatness for a short time. Richard O’Brian plays Xilus. A thief who has a deadly maze that has the ruby “The Eye of the Dragon” hidden in it’s centre. That’s right. Richard O’Brian has a maze! This brilliant parody of his classic gameshow The Crystal Maze is incredible. It’s very much like The Mummy or Raiders of the Lost Ark in its use of peril and humour (it even pretty much copies some of the traps from Raiders), and truly makes this film worth watching, if only for 10 minutes. O’Brian is great too and sends himself up perfectly, I just wish they’d managed to get him playing the harmonica into it somewhere.

The thing about this movie is that everything about it, apart from the maze scene, is wrong, but all of that added together makes it strangely watchable. It’s one of those films that’s just so inept, that watching it becomes a guilty pleasure. Just don’t take this film seriously, and ignore how many other movies it rips off, and you could well enjoy wasting a few hours on a rainy Sunday watching it. Alternatively you could invite some friends round, grab some dice and dust off those old Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks and make an adventure of your own. As for me, I’m going to grab a beer and rewatch some of the old cartoons.