Year:
2000
Studio:
Sweetpea Entertainment
Movie:
2/5
DVD:
3/5
Dungeons and Dragons
is a moderately budgeted fantasy movie based on the role-playing game
of the same name. As a fantasy movie on its own right it's subpar and
as a D&D movie it is unsatisfactory. One of my biggest problems
with the movie as a D&D vehicle is that it doesn't really reflect
D&D. It's not based on any of the D&D game worlds and the game
elements are so much in the background that they might as well not be
there.
Still if you listen to the commentaries you realize that they did try
to make a D&D movie with D&D elements. The director/producer
Courtney Solomon is quite the D&D geek and tries to create a movie
that is faithful to the game. Unfortunately the game elements
themselves don't lend themselves to a movie. It's the game worlds and
characters and mythology that is easy to film. It's just hard to film
the concept of classes and levels and memorized spells (the last isn't
that hard but it wasn't done in the movie).
This is the story of Ridley (Justin Whalin), thief with his partner in
crime Snails (Marlon Wayans). One night they decide to break into the
Mages' Guild. They are caught by Mage Apprentice Marina (Zoe McLellan)
but before she can properly alert the authorities the three are running
for their lives from the evil Damodar (Bruce Payne) and his red guard.
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Apparently,
the mage Profion (Jeremy Irons) wants the map that the trio have. That
map leads to a great treasure: a rod of red dragon control. With it
Profion can wrest control of the empire from Empress Savina (Thora
Birch). Of course the two thieves want nothing to do with any of
this but Ridley is strangely attracted to Marina and aids her in her
quest to help the Empress (that's not how the director intended it but
that's how it looked to me on watching the movie). They are joined by
the dwarven warrior Elwood (Lee Arenberg) and the elven tracker Norda
(Kristen Wilson).
It's a fairly roleplay-y adventure with lots of chase scenes, a visit
to the Thieves' Guild, a maze, a dungeon, lots of fighting, and a
climatic battle between Ridley and Damodar and Profion. But a lot of
stuff had to be shortened or cut out because the special effects budget
was insufficient. And that's one reason why the movie looks so corny at
times. It's not a really bad story but you'd have to love D&D to
appreciate this movie.
The DVD has two commentary tracks. The first has director Courtney
Solomon and actor Justin Whalin with some soundbites from Dave Arneson.
The second track has Solomon and director of photography Douglas
Milsome with different soundbites from Dave Arneson. There are about a
dozen deleted scenes with optional commentary. Two short documentaries:
"Let the Games Begin" about roleplaying games and "The Making of
Dungeons and Dragons". Some weird featurettes on the various special
effects round up the extra material.
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