‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ review: Good old fantasy magic done to near-perfection
It has dungeons, dragons, magnificent castles, evil wizards, close-call adventures and more; ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ takes you right where you want to go, but with a teeny bit extra… like the extra toffee you get from your grandma
(Originally published in The Hindu on March 31, 2023)
What joy it is to step out of a theme park of a movie that doesn’t set up too many expectations and yet gives back more bang for the buck. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has everything you would expect; dark dungeons, creepy crawly creatures, magnificent castles, evil wizards, friends banding together, families fighting for each other, betrayal, close-call adventures, perfectly laid-out plans going awry, lots of lore, and the magic of… magic.
Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who have also written the film along with Michael Gilio, bring all of this together to take us on a jolly good journey. Like the famous role-playing game it is based on, something happens one after the other, like one ride after the other, with lots of good comedy and bewitching colours over a template screenplay done to perfection.
The characters are colourful as they come as well, initially seeming like cut-outs from the fantasy movie template. We start off inside a dungeon where Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), a former Harpers member turned alcoholic after his wife’s death, and his friend Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), a brute exiled from her tribe, are imprisoned. As they stand trial,…
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