Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

 

Genre: Adventure/Fantasy

Time: 2h 14mins

Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

Quick Summary: A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

I went into this expecting a very average movie that barely knew anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons aside from the stereotypical knowledge, I came out very pleasantly surprised. 

I am so happy it decided to not take itself seriously, because most Dungeons and Dragons games are never 100% serious and have their fun little silly moments. This was full of them. From ideas that were clearly thought of on the spot (in the sense of DnD), moments that were bounced back and forward between characters clearly having fun, giving a random backstory they thought of then and there, and wild ideas that clearly got a natural 20 on accident.

Though you don't see any dice roles or "real life" cut scenes, you can feel as if you're in on an actual campaign and honestly, I loved that. 

The characters are pretty strong in this, none of them fully stealing the spotlight sadly, but they all stood on fairly equal ground. The villains were incredibly cool in my eyes, some landing in a morally grey area of if they are actually bad and others straight up big bad. The most standout to me was Simon. I found him incredibly funny through his small little reactions such as eye rolls and quick comments. To me, he felt like a new player who had no idea what they were doing and kept landing unfortunately bad rolls.  Weirdly enough, I felt like Chris Pine lacked a bit in being the lead. Sure he was funny, but he didn't really feel like the leader of the group and hide by the sidelines a bit. 

At first, I was worried about the pacing of the film as it throws you right into this and jumps from scene to scene incredibly quick, but that didn't end up being a problem, in fact, I feel like this thrived off of it. It keeps this momentum going really well and didn't lose my interest at all. 

The costumes in this are incredibly detailed feeling equally modern and also perfectly fitting into the fantasy genre. The CGI work is great, while not fully realistic or smooth, it does a hell of a job bringing everything to life and making the fictitious world as lifelike as possible.

Unfortunately, the plot is incredibly cliche and easy to predict as well as some of the fights seem really obviously choreographed. Although I don't know much about the lore this film tries to tell, I think it cut a few corners with the background as it felt like a few things were missing, or some explanations felt very half-baked. As well personally to me, the ending felt too quick, done and gone. Things just seemed to be all good and magically good again a bit too easily.

This is 100% worth watching even if you know nothing about Dungeons and Dragons. It's an incredibly fun movie that will fly by.

8/10

"how everyone thinks we can solve any problem with magic. There are limits! This isn't some bedtime story; this is the real world"

"Xenk: The Red Wizards created an army of the undead.

Simon: Sounds Lovely

Xenk: Quite the opposite

Simon: I know. I was being ironic 

Xenk: I find irony is a blade that cuts he who wields it most especially.

Holga: You're not a lot of fun, are you?"