'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Review: Table-Top Fantasy Game Gets a Fun Film Campaign
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
PG-13: Fantasy action/violence and some language
Runtime: 2 Hours and 14 Minutes
Production Companies: Hasbro Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Directors: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley
Writers: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant
Release Date: March 31, 2023
Exclusively in Theaters
Hollywood has decided to roll their die again to bring the beloved tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons to the big screen. This attempt took as long as, if not longer than, a bunch of procrastinators trying to finish a campaign together. Twenty years after the first DnD movie flopped harder than [insert a funny quip of how someone dies in DND], Game Night filmmakers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley became dungeon masters of a new adaptation. What they cast was a familiar—albeit delightfully fun—heist flick, though the bridging of broad audiences and fans of the game may be a bit rocky.
When a heist mission to retrieve a magical relic goes wrong, bard Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and his barbarian BFF Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) get arrested. Betrayed by their former accomplices, greedy con artist Forge (Hugh Grant) and ruthless wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) seize their town for them to control. When they escape, Lord Forge puts a bounty on them and, to add insult to injury, pits Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) against him. To fight back against their former comrades, Edgin and Holga recruit a ragtag group of magical misfits. There’s Simon (Justice Smith), a self-doubting magical sorcerer, Doric (Sophia Lillis), a shapeshifting druid, and Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), a skillful paladin who doesn’t understand metaphors. Together they create an elaborate heist to save Kira and their town, leveling up their powers along the way.
There’s a beautiful irony in seeing co-director/co-writer John Francis Daley, who started his career on Freaks and Geeks as Sam Weir, the titular DnD-loving geek, become a filmmaker behind this adaptation. Fantasy adventures aren’t usually my cup of tea, but the filmmakers immersed me, painting their worldbuilding with luscious, vivid brush strokes in its production design and art direction. Production designer Ray Chen (art director behind Endgame and Infinity War) brings whimsical pop to the fantastical backgrounds, CG green screen quality aside. Thankfully, the colors aren’t bogged down with saturation, so the immersive feel of the world isn’t as corporate as the number of blockbusters influenced by the MCU. They craft a world that resembles the (gone too soon and underrated) fantasy musical comedy Galavant where each set piece takes its look but has enough brightness and color to match the frivolous nature of the comedic tone. They cram as much detailed fan service as possible without feeling like pandering. As the adventure between Edgin and his team gets rolling, the filmmakers display their love of the game and celebrate its community with dialogue and funny sight gags.
Goldstein and Daley angle their theatrical campaign as a Soderbergh-style heist flick with a DnD coat of paint. It embodies many of the genre’s attributes, including its in medias res starting point, the “getting the band together” narrative beats, and varying set pieces where the team must learn to work together. As it abides by the archetype, Honor Among Thieves is at its peak when it goes full camp, bridging its silly tone with tightly-directed action sequences. Set pieces like Holga fighting executioners in hand-to-hand combat while Edgin tries to untie his hands or waking up a band of corpses to question them about the whereabouts of a lost relic mark some of the most refreshingly original moments that garner belly laughs. They play most of the comedy with straightforwardness without incorporating any Ryan Reynolds-like self-awareness, which I initially feared it would do. Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, and Sophia Lillis share a light-hearted chemistry as the band of magical misfits.
Chris Pine proves once again that he is the one Chris to rule them all through his effortless charm and quick-witted banter. Despite Edgin having no powers, only equipped with a lute (a la Robin to Teen Titans or Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy), Pine’s affirming wit and confidence convince his leader stance, and he carries the film with his trademark bravado. Michelle Rodriguez is equally great, showing off her comedic deadpan chops as his gruff right-hand Holga. They have such a unique buddy chemistry where his Robin Hood-like opportunist energy opposite her gruff demeanor makes for great comedy.
Other notable cast members include the ever so suave and effervescent Hugh Grant, who gets wittier with age. His Lord Forge is a Phoenix Buchanan reskin, but he’s as delightfully funny as he is slimy.
The key to enjoying a DnD campaign with friends involves sharing a specific camaraderie more than the quest itself. The Honor Among Thieves ensemble cast is delightfully charismatic, but the character archetypes and story beats are too similar to Marvel, especially Guardians of the Galaxy (but with a much better Chris attached). Whenever the humor bleeds into that mechanical MCU territory, attempting to aim for a broadened audience, it loses the DnD flair and originality. Honor Among Thieves feels like a joyous celebration of playing the titular game but you can practically hear a studio exec screaming for the filmmakers to divert from the nerd stuff and go broad for a general audience. Sometimes the cast makes the humor work, but when it doesn’t, it merely prolongs the already bloated runtime.
If it isn't ripping off the MCU’s middling humor, it's ripping off its story elements. The climax copies and pastes pieces from Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers to the extent that Owlbear goes Hulk-on-Loki mode beat-for-beat. It was fun witnessing that with an excitable SXSW crowd, though disheartening that something made for nerds, by nerds, adheres to the commodified mediocrity of the most popular entertainment franchise.
Despite some ambitious set pieces hitting a Gore Verbinski scale of wacky, swashbuckling action, some CG assets look completely untextured, like a first-pass rendering at best. I said this about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and I’ll say it again: some of the VFX work is on the same level of quality as an early-2000s Robert Rodriguez family film. For a movie with a $150 million price tag, I couldn’t help but wince when some unrendered CG effect would appear onscreen, interrupting my immersion.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a delightfully funny and action-packed campaign thrown onto the big screen. Granted, it runs into Marvel-bannered Mimics along its quest, bogging down some of the unique comedic stylings of Goldstein and Daley. Still, they deliver a fun studio blockbuster equipped with a magical ensemble that casts a strong spell.
