I watched Dungeons And Dragons last night. What a hot mess. 2 out of 5 stars.
The good
Chris Pine and Hugh Grant did their usual sterling jobs. Both are very charismatic actors, and Grant wonderfully chews the scenery every time he's on screen. Full marks to them. Michelle Rodriguez did an acceptable job as a warrior-woman. The rest of the ensemble cast hit their marks and managed to say their lines with a straight face.
The action scenes (when they eventually occurred) were decent enough, but nothing to rave about. It was nice to see a couple of iconic D&D monsters.
The Diversity™ in the cast managed to feel natural rather than forced.
The Bad
The visual effects ranged from acceptable to poor, especially the CGI.
Some of the humour was good but most of the jokes were lame and fell flat.
They tried way to hard to satirise D&D without hitting the target. At least, I hope it was a satire -- please tell me it is a satire? If we, the audience, is supposed to take this as a serious D&D story, that doesn't say much for D&D.
If you are expecting a fun ensemble action-comedy romp like Guardians of the Galaxy, or an affectionate parody of the source material like Galaxy Question, you're going to be horribly disappointed.
The Ugly
The plot was awful. The script was awful. The dialog was awful. The backstory exposition probably only lasted ten minutes but my god it felt like an hour and despite everything Chris Pine could do it was boring as hell.
At no point in the movie did I find myself engaged in the quest, hoping they would succeed, or caring for any of the characters.
The cast utterly failed to have any chemistry between them. Even Chris Pine couldn't save it.
The whole subplot about Edgin's daughter and dead wife was lame as fuck and unnecessary, and the "your real family is the friends you met on the way!" parable was just clumsily done.
The movie went on and on and on way too long, it could have and should have been much tighter.
The big gladiatorial battle was just silly.
The cliched subplot about Simon the wizard ("you can do it if only you believe in yourself!") felt like something written by 12 year olds for six year olds.
So many terrible names."Xenk Yendar", "Szass Tam", "Mordenkainen", "Themberchaud". Who makes up this shit?
