Review: Dungeons & Dragons - Honour Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons:
Honour Among Thieves*¹
Cert: 12A / 134 mins / Dir. John Francis Daley / Trailer

Six years feels like a long time for a film to be in development in this day and age. When I say 'development', I mean everything after that day in 2017 when the Hasbro exec in charge of D&D watched Jumanji and hollered "GUYS why aren't WE doing that?". Because evidently that happened...

And so it comes to pass; the very archetype of furrow-browed geekdom for half a century stripped of sharp edges and gatekeeping, retooled as a kid-friendly action comedy starring familiar faces from some of the entertainment world's most successful franchises. And, pleasingly, it works very well.

BARD

Chris Pine leads a pack of mythical adventurers as Edgin the bard (one of only two characters to get any significant backstory work), joined by Michelle Rodriguez's Holga the barbarian (she's the other one), Justice Smith's Simon the wizard, and Sophia Lillis' Doric the druid. Together they try to remove the reins of power from Hugh Grant's Forge (a former ally but perennial con-man) and Daisy Head's Sofina the evil wizard. Chloe Coleman also stars as Edgin's teenage daughter with abandonment-issues. Honestly, that girl doesn't have any luck.

All of these performances are fantastic on individual levels*², although the chemistry between players is lacking somewhat. It's unclear whether this is down to slight miscasting or the challenge of working under two directors. The script, meanwhile, manages to hold the whole thing together, and the film's strength is that its writer/directors have penned this as an action-comedy first and foremost, with the branded tie-in opportunity taking a back seat (Hasbro get their name in the titles, so shifting units from toy shop shelves is down to them now).

The storyline itself is a more standard 'break into the castle / steal the treasure / realise the treasure wasn't the most important thing' affair, which makes up for its shortcomings by deftly spinning the plates of showcasing its characters. While the movie certainly borrows tonally from both its parent-franchise and the wider genre, there are relatively few nods to the mechanics of roleplaying games themselves. But at the height of Act III we do get what initially appears to be a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the iconic 1980s cartoon iteration*³, although this is hammered home a little more firmly in the following minutes to ensure value for money.

CHAT GPT

At its funniest when it really leans into its gags (the extended necromancy scene is delightfully inspired), for all D&D's throwaway quality it's not without a few moments of meta-smartness. A particular favourite comes in the second act where it's suddenly crystal clear than Hugh Grant is playing his slimy, boisterous con-man by doing a 100% impersonation of Boris Johnson, and perhaps because the directors hadn't twigged what he was doing (and because this works for the part anyway), it stayed in the film untouched.

Of course there's a finale to be had, and Honour Among Thieves gets messy in places, not least when it tries to raise its dramatic intensity. Coincidentally, that's also when the film is at its most ordinary as a popcorn-flick. Naturally it will hold the door open for sequels, but providing they expand upon this world rather than just rehashing gags, there's the potential for real greatness in the future.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is good. In some places it's almost great. But the elusive Epic Quality™ needed to elevate fantasy films to all-timers is just out of reach here.

Decent work though, lads.
Now do Gauntlet...

*¹ Okay before anything else, I'd like to add how quietly impressed I am at the UK distributors Entertainment One rebranding this with the British spelling of Honour for the United Kingdom promo materials. Because that means there's been a meeting about it pretty high up, and a grammar pedant has absolutely lost their shit until they got their way, and I am here for that.



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*² Genuine credit to Californian actor Justice Smith, whose movie-long British Accent™ is admirably close enough to work for the majority of viewers, but just subliminally wrong enough to be distractingly off-kilter to vocal nit-pickers like myself. ^{[ BACK ]}


*³ Spoilers, highlight-to-read: Seriously though, I thought that the cartoon reference was going to be Sofina attaching the red-wizard's horn onto one side of her shaved head to channel Venger and attain ultimate power. Alas not. Shame. [/ENDS] ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: 65

65
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Scott Beck & Bryan Woods / Trailer

In a month seemingly dominated by sequels and franchise entries, it makes a refreshing change to see a film that's standing on its own feet. Of course, when that film is a transparent mashup of After Earth and Jurassic Park by way of Passengers, it's debatable how much originality is actually allowed to seep onto cinema screens these days, but points for trying.

COACH

We meet Adam Driver as Mills, essentially a prehistoric alien coach driver who's tasked with transporting cryogenically frozen passengers on a two-year interplanetary journey while struggling to deal with separation from his terminally ill daughter (Chloe Coleman). When his transport runs viewport-first into an uncharted asteroid belt, the ship is forced to crash land on a primitive jungle planet, killing everyone except Mills and a young (and now orphaned) girl, Koa (Arianna Greenblatt).

Separated from a rescue-shuttle by 12km of uneven ground and the array of dinosaurs who live and hunt there, the pair have only a day to make it to their escape vessel because a larger asteroid is about to collide with the planet. Because that planet is Earth, 65 million years ago. And yes, it's that asteroid*¹.

SLEDGEHAMMER

At 93 minutes this film is lean, and the screenplay dosn't mess about in setting up its stall. The pacing is brisk by necessity but never feels rushed (if anything, viewers are more likely to want the two central characters to stop dawdling with bugs and berries). Chris Bacon's score (with contributions from Danny Elfman) is bombastic and suspensful in turn, and Salvatore Totino's cinematography is very solid considering how much of 65 takes place at night or in dark spaces. The production design is accomplished throughout, even if the ship-interiors immediately look like they're from about a hundred other mid-budget sci-fi films.

What's perhaps more surprising is how emotionally competent the film is. Greenblatt balances fear, panic and trauma while retaining her character's humanity*² (and, essentially, her likeability) in a performance which is far better than the film technically needs. Likewise, Driver initially feels miscast despite his sincerity. We've seen glimpses of Adam's action-chops before, and he holds up his character well as a pragmatic do-er who has no idea how to deal with his situation or how he feels about Koa effectively becoming a surrogate daughter. But the bottom line is that any other version of this film would have starred a gurning Mark Wahlberg or Gerard Butler, so I suspect we got the good end of a deal here.

For the most part what writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are doing isn't great, and yet the film is pretty great at doing it. Considering how inherently silly and pedestrian it all is, this works surprisingly well. The script takes its characters and threats seriously enough for them to matter, but never tries to convince the audience that this is anything more than perfectly serviceable, perfectly disposable fun.

65 won't be world-changing (unless you're one of those dinosaurs), but it's far better than it probably has any real right to be.

*¹ It's okay, I know. You don't have to tell me it's classed as a meteor once it enters the planet's atmosphere. I know that and you know that. It just doesn't feel right to blithely flip between asteroid and meteor in the same paragraph while expecting everyone else to be familiar the similarities and distinctions between them. Grammar vs science I suppose, and paper beats rock this time round. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I mean 'humanity' in an emotional sense. SPOILERS, highlight-to-read: The characters aren't human; this isn't a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy tribute where the pair get accidentally stranded on prehistoric Earth and end up inadvertently kickstarting humanity. Apart from anything else that would be deeply weird since Koa is supposed to be around nine years old. But Mills and Koa are played by humans here (without colour-tinting or sticking gills etc on their faces) because that's the best way of selling the performances. Just buy into the fact that they're human-looking aliens with no humans around for direct comparison and you won't go far wrong. [/END] ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: My Spy

My Spy
Cert: 12A / 99 mins / Dir. Peter Segal / Trailer

Well, with ‘that virus’ stepping up to the pandemic plate and causing increasing dents in the cinematic schedule*¹, we have to take what big-screen entertainment we can get and when we can get it. Cue a stroll down to my local for a minimal-contact screening of the new Dave Bautista flick, My Spy. The short version goes like this:

Something something, Russian/French gangsters; something something, CIA undercover stakeout mission; something something, brick-shithouse action hero ends up assisted by a smart, sassy 9yr old girl who happens to be the child of a hot single mother. Cue falling over, mawkish bonding, clumsy dad-dancing, slo-mo explosions and wildly ill-judged cultural crossover references. This is a kids’ comedy with one ‘bitch’, one ‘shit’ and two ‘dick’s, just enough to pull it over the line for a 12A certificate. You have seen this before.

I went in to My Spy with moderate-to-low expectations and boy does this movie deliver. Never as awful as something like Little, there’s nonetheless a sense of gringind, underachieving autopilot*² to the proceedings. Bautista (the second superhero currently proving his best work is within the MCU) is basically interchangeable with Schwarzenegger, Johnson and even Cena here, such is the screenplay's lack of identity. With backup from genre stalwarts Ken Jeong and Kristen Schaal, it’s tempting to think that everyone involved is better than this. Yet their paid-for presence proves they clearly aren’t.

Plot markers and callbacks to other (better) movies are shamelessly ticked off as we speed toward a literal cliff-edge finale. By this time, the film actually has picked up quite a lot, but has definitely not earned that uplift. The good news is that My Spy is exactly what you expect it to be. The knock-on is that you should probably know better by now…




This is Stuber meets Playing With Fire.



Nope.



Stream it for your kids.



Nope.



Possible.



There is.



Level 2: Parisa Fitz-Henley's in this, and she was in that Fantasy Island (earlier this week, no less) alongside Ian 'Ganwick Trag' Roberts and Goran D. 'Lampay Fay' Kleut.





*¹ As well as the widely publicised Bond delay, the last few days have seen cancellations of next week's A Quiet Place double-bill and a Cineworld Unlimited screening of Dream Horse. The second of those I'm basically fine with, but it's the short notice due to twitchy distribution companies that really stings... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² From the writers of Battleship, The Meg and Red 2, you say? Well, how could I not..? ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.