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the Last Word in
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Dungeons & Dragons (1999) Director: Courtney Solomon 
review by Trent Walters It's always good to find a movie to base your rating system on. A five-star flick would be Heavenly Creatures, while Dungeons & Dragons sets the one-star standard. The director appears to have hired from all the best high school drama queens and drag queens. One surmises the two authors scrounged up their most beloved game of their pimpled youths and slapped together their favouite plot coupons they could squeeze into 107 minutes (your reviewer never fully understood the meaning of 'plot coupons' - plot items fought over to get to the next coupon - until this movie). Even Jeremy Irons does nothing to redeem this movie. Either his only role is that of a contemplative intellectual or he had the time of his life butchering his role as Profion, the evil villain (and villains can be cool, i.e. Darth Vader and not that wussey Darth Maul, either). Two thieves, Snails and Ridley, steal into the mage palatial university to rip off a buck or two and bump into a mage whose purpose is to aid Savina, Empress of the kingdom of Izmer, against the evil Profion whose purpose is to stop Savina from granting equal rights (as all great rulers claim until they get into office, then divide the equal rights among those who voted for them). The thieves and a dwarf and an elf cop get more or less shanghaied into the battle to fetch the red dragon 'rod', a pubescent Freudian joke or slip, no doubt. Enter the plot coupons: figure out how to work a magic map that sucks you into another dimension without purpose, run the gauntlet maze of death for dishonour amongst thieves, enter Ali Baba's cave and steal the hot rod - but wait! It's guarded by the 'boney' skeleton of its inventor; the rod unleashes evil unto the world. Do you accept the manly challenge? If you played D&D in your youth and have a high tolerance for shoddy acting, and a love for plot coupons, this is no worse than your best-selling video games. Go watch it. |
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