Nonureva
Really Surprised!
Freeman
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
pietroschek
With all the moaning about how bad this movie is, it seems weird to me that nobody even mentioned a single strength of it. I am a bit lengthy here, but I work to make a point. The first of, on date of writing, 3 Dungeons & Dragons movies is a powerful roleplaying work. It is really not played by supreme actors, still each actor and actress did quite a performance in their roles as characters any D&D player of the planet can recreate within the rules of the pen & paper game.The people called bad actors here should have been called pioneer roleplayers along with it, as even flawed efforts are better than the ever-moaning horde which neither funds a project, nor invests any own work in finishing one!CONTEXT: A magocracy has been selfish and rigid for too long, henceforth getting separated and weak. Evil sensing it musters its champions to indulge a proverbial hostile takeover. The involuntary 'heroes & heroines' are forced to make their stands, as the story unfolds with fools lying vanquished along the wayside.Sense Motive: The idea of social change is something plenty of teenagers consider powerful, necessary, and somehow their birthright. No miracle then that they waste their own energy on that plus some ever-obvious attempts to get laid and party. Within the movie we get the classic love overcoming prejudices, as the Romeo here is a Rogue from the disease-ridden underclasses & Juliet is a wizard from the establishment. BONUS: The duty of the elven ranger, the duty of the evil fighter, and even the thieves guild; Are all recognized as lessons any character above level 8 MUST know. Levels 8 to 12 are the levels which, outside of badly plagiarized video games, focus mostly on building a class-suiting stronghold, and learning to operate it. While the movie certainly did not aim at it (like AD&D Birthright did), it was nice to see some decent yet practical examples of it applied properly!How anyone entitling himself or herself a roleplayer & gamer could fail to notice any of it is... Suspicious! For it looks, as if some failures tried to get a proverbial 'smear job' done.LISTED:+ The movie introduces D&D storytelling to people with a minimum of background knowledge.+ The movie attempts to compromise between roleplay & acting, though it clearly fails on it here and there, too.+ All characters are authentic and within the rules, compared to video games within which dumbest ideas are forced unto us by cheat- leveled pseudo-superiors. + The movie looks like a high-school or college project done by fans, and that atmosphere is brought across without messing up the story. Even with age 42 I still remembered some teenage moments, did all others forget? ;-) Rhetorical Question. + If you prefer to look only for the bad sides you might manage to find absolutely every negative aspect mentioned by the other reviewers! + The movie succeeded in inspiring a sequel, not a bad re-narration of the same idea.
SnoopyStyle
The Empire of Izmer is ruled by The Mages who oppress everyone else as Commoners. Evil mage Profion (Jeremy Irons) is plotting to depose Empress Savina (Thora Birch) who is trying to institute some equality. He's trying control the dragons. Thieves Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans) try to steal from the Magic School. They are caught by inexperienced mage Marina (Zoe McLellan). They find Profion's henchman Damodar (Bruce Payne) killing the master mage while trying to find the Rod of Savrille which controls Red Dragons. Marina manages to escape with the scroll followed closely by the thieves. They encounter dwarf Elwood and elf Norda. Together they battle Damodar in the search for the Rod.This is a bad movie. It starts bad but it gets even worst. Jeremy Irons is horribly overacting. It gets worst in the climax because he is such a big part of it. Thora Birch seems lost trying act opposite his crazy performance. The clunky dialog doesn't help in the least. The climax also has a lot of CGI. The problem with that is the bad CGI. Dragons should be cool but these look cheesy.The meat of the movie is bad but not horrible. The group's quest is a series of adventures that feels manufactured like the game itself. Justin Whalin is a second rate actor doing his best. Zoe McLellan is pretty good. Marlon Wayans sometimes go overboard trying to joke around. The costumes look like Hollywood leftovers. The quest is not that bad for a B-movie, but the climatic battle is simply too horrible to watch. The blame has to be laid at director Courtney Solomon's feet. He should have told Irons to dial back a couple of levels. And somebody needs to take a course in writing.
geekgirl101
I didn't think it was too bad of a movie, although I have to agree with a few people about some roles that may as well not have been there. I think much of the venom is about this not being related to the Dungeons & Dragons series or game.Most of the main roles are played by teenagers, so this would suit as a family movie for children who aren't young enough for Disney cartoons but old enough for some live action that won't give them nightmares.Acting is overall pretty good. It doesn't feel like a budget movie, and certainly doesn't show to be a budget movie with the dragons. You really do feel that they put a good amount of effort to make everything look convincingly realistic, but what is disappointing is that half the cast don't even have a role. They'll do or say something once or twice but they hardly do or say anything else that actually contributes their character to the movie. You start to forget they're actually there as the movie is centred on the main hero, girlfriend, and protagonists.And as for the ending it was something that was slapped in a year later without thinking about how the audience is going to relate it to any part of the movie. It leaves you confused asking yourself what just happened because it didn't happen anywhere else in the movie and there's no reference anywhere to explain why it would happen. It was an effort to make it not seem as depressing but the writer should've at least have thought of adding something somewhere else in the movie to explain why it ended like it did or an explanation at the very end instead of "don't question the gift you've been given." In fact it seems that there is a lot of unanswerable questions in the movie with the excuse that it's not to be questioned, and it leaves you a bit frustrated because you want answers to understand the movie, not to be left guessing why some people weren't allowed to help or why things happened the way they did. It becomes nonsensical jibber jabber that screams out badly written because the author couldn't be bothered to put in an explanation and left it to our imagination, but there's only so much our imagination can tell us and without any clues anywhere else you may as well say "they can't help rescue the girl because they ate bread for breakfast."
Leofwine_draca
I like the fantasy genre. I like the whole Dungeons & Dragons world. I even used the watch the cartoon as a kid in the 1980s. Although I never played the RPG, I used to be - and still am - an avid fan of the adventure gamebooks that you play with a couple of dice. So this is just the sort of film that should appeal.Unfortunately it turns out to be an absolutely appalling travesty of a movie and one of the worst ever made. Gone is any attempt to make a movie on a serious level. Instead, we have a semi-comic fantasy that contains a few recognisable elements from the genre - including a badly-animated CGI dragon - but feels like a student play in all other respects.Everything is bad about this film, and I mean EVERYTHING: the writing is horrible, the direction sub-par, the characterisation is nil, the costumes are eye-wateringly ridiculous and the special effects are anything but. Literally the only enjoyment I got from the whole thing were the cameos from Tom Baker and Richard O'Brien, two British cult favourites.Actually, I lie; I did get some fun from trying to figure out who the worst actor was on-screen. It's not Bruce Payne, whose B-movie villain duties come in handy, nor is it Jeremy Irons, who delivers a pantomime performance reminiscent of Alan Rickman's in ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES. It's not Marlon Wayans in another lame comedy relief part, nor is it Justin Whalin, as wooden as he is. No, it's a toss-up between Kristen Wilson, who's really bad as the elf, and Thora Birch as some kind of princess. In the end, Birch wins out; her acting really is that terrible. It's cringeworthy and embarrassing every time a sentence comes out of her mouth.Thankfully, I'd seen the even cheaper DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: WRATH OF THE DRAGON GOD, so I had some idea of the level of sheer awfulness I was about to witness. But forget going in to this and having a good time; it's not even so-bad-it's-good, it's just so-bad-it's-bad.
