Movie Review: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves should not work nearly as well as it does. It’s an adaptation of a game whose heyday was forty years ago, in a genre that spits out three flops for every success – lest we forget, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was preceded by a Dungeons and Dragons adaptation that even hardcore fans of the game are loathe to revisit.
And yet, this new D&D adventure is a hoot, an imaginative and fun yarn that will please longtime Dungeon Masters while keeping the unfamiliar engaged. It has enough wit and charm to be mentioned in the same sentence as The Princess Bride, even if it can’t quite capture the epic highs of Rob Reiner’s classic.
The film opens with thieves Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) in an icy prison, appealing for pardon. There’s just enough time for backstory – Edgin was formerly a noble man before the death of his wife – before they make a daring escape and set out to get Edgin’s daughter back from their former ally, a conman named Forge (Hugh Grant). But Forge has turned Edgin’s daughter against him and placed himself as ruler of the land; Holga and Edgin assemble a motley crew, including a confidence-lacking magician (Justice Smith) and a shape-shifter (Sophia Lillis), to undertake their boldest heist yet and brave a land full of evil sorcerers, dangerous dragons and other perils.
The Dungeons and Dragons game was brought back to public consciousness through the Netflix show Stranger Things, and it’s easy to imagine Hollywood wanting to capitalize on the horror show’s success with a dark, epic reimagining of the classic RPG. While understandable, a film that played it straight would likely get lost in the shuffle with every other CGI-heavy fantasy. Thankfully, they take another route, bringing in Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the writer-director duo behind 2018’s comedy Game Night, to weave a story that balances the mystical and magical with a welcome dose of humor and personality.
Pine has leading man looks, but he’s always best when he gets to be weird. On paper, Edgin has the same rogue nature and skill with a quip that Pine brought to his version of Captain Kirk, but the actor wisely portrays him as a bit inept at anything other than running his mouth. He’s constantly failing, prone to pettiness and constantly has a one-liner ready; but Pine also imbues the character with charm and buried nobility. His motor-mouth skills are a strong compliment to Rodriguez’s gruff, largely silent Holga, who has her own secrets and regrets, including a past dalliance with a character portrayed by an A-list star whose name I won’t ruin. Rodriguez is usually relegated to playing the badass – and Holga is certainly that – but she also shows a softness and flair for comedy, and it’s the best the actor has been in a long time.
The script by Goldstein and Daley, with an assist from Michael Gilio, makes sure to honor the game (and heist films before it) by giving each character a variety of skills and weak points. Smith is often very funny as the woefully bad magician, and the character’s low self-confidence keeps him relatable. Likewise, Lillis is a lot of fun as the shape-shifter with a grudge against humans; one of the film’s best sequences involves her transforming into various animals as she tries to escape a castle. Rege-Jean Page shows up as a noble warrior with an inability to identify sarcasm, a trait he manages to make funny without feeling like a rip off of Dave Bautista’s work in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. And Grant has the time of his life as the preening, evil foil, in a role that calls back to his work in Paddington 2…and if it’s a little too similar to that film’s characterization, can you blame them for stealing from one of the greats and playing to Grant’s strengths?
Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Pine, and Justice Smith in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”
The world is beautifully rendered, full of an assortment of magical creatures – several of them created with physical effects rather than CGI – and backdrops that include giant mountain peaks, roaring volcanoes, underground mines, and more. D&D fans will likely spend much of the film’s runtime picking up references to characters, beasts, and spells from the game, while the uninitiated will have fun watching how weird the film is willing to go. Within five minutes, it introduces a giant man/crow hybrid and, from there, tosses in animals known as “Owlbears,” resurrection spells, possessed soldiers, dangerous tournaments, and vast treasure troves. While the film moves with the pace and tone of a comedy – a sequence where Edgin must resurrect the dead to find a precious artifact is one of the funniest scenes in a while – the comedy never makes the Marvel mistake of undercutting the world or the characters. The silly humor and high stakes serve as perfect counterpoints to each other.
Having not been a D&D player, I’m not sure whether the film pulls from any existing lore or storylines but, like the game, it’s propelled by a series of smaller quests the gang has to complete in order to help them on the larger one. It never winks too much at the audience, and the cast understands how to modulate their performance and keep things light while also sprinkling in heart when necessary. It can be episodic and a bit overlong at times, and the film’s final reveals can be predicted a mile away, but the spirit is so fun that these complaints are small. Even those not into the fantasy genre will likely enjoy the mix of comedy and adventure, it’s a quest worth taking. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves won’t rewrite the book of high fantasy, but it’s one of the year’s most pleasurable early surprises.
