Dungeons & Dragons (New Line Platinum Series) | Lee Arenberg, Tom Baker

Dungeons & Dragons (New Line Platinum Series) | Lee Arenberg, Tom Baker | Dungeons & Dragons is sure to disappoint fans of the game

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Dungeons & Dragons...

	Dungeons & Dragons (New Line Platinum Series) Lee Arenberg, Tom Baker New Line Home Video, 2001 average customer review:based on 299 reviews view larger image
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There is trouble in Izmer. With the emperor dead from an assassin's poison, the 16-year-old princess Savina (Thora Birch) inherits not just the throne but also the royal scepter, which has the power to command gold dragons. With a youthful idealism, she decides all people should be equal, from lowly commoners to the ruling-class, magic-wielding mages. This doesn't sit well with the mages, so Archmage Profion (Jeremy Irons) leads a revolt in the Council against Savina's rule, forcing her to relinquish the royal scepter. In order to maintain her power, she decides she needs the rod of Savrille, which can control red dragons. To retrieve it, she hires two bumbling thieves, Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans), and an apprentice mage (Zoe McLellan). The true trouble in Izmer is the fact that it's a poorly imagined world that cribs more from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark than it does from the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game that shares its title. Director Courtney Solomon optioned the rights to the game in 1991, when he was 21, and should have spent the years since then drafting a coherent script. Mediocre special effects take precedence over story, and the actors try to make up for that by hamming it up. Irons, in particular, covers his embarrassment by chewing the scenery and spitting it out. Often unintentionally funny, Dungeons & Dragons is that fun kind of bad movie, whose cult status would be all but guaranteed if it weren't for a slow second act mired in the boring bumbling of the awkward thieves. Still, there are plenty of laughs to be had. --Andy Spletzer

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IRONS & DUNGEONS & DRAGONS -- Oh my!!!

Once upon a time in a land not so far away, a callow youth named Courtney Solomon had a dream. So he saved his pennies and at the tender age of 20, secured the film rights to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and thence pursued his Holy Grail: a big-screen version of the much-loved neo-medieval role-playing game. For 10 long years he wandered in the Holly Wood in search of the all-important Green Light, until one day he chanced upon the Lord of High Concepts (Sir Joel of the Silver). A meeting was taken and thence, "a Courtney Solomon film" was born.

Talented actors signed on for big paychecks, but now, so close to his dream, the novice filmmaker refused to allow his vision to pass into the hands of those more experienced, and he himself assumed the director's chair. Some $43 million later, he had his tale of the fair Empress of Izmer, whose rule is threatened by an evil mage, or magician. With the help of a dwarf, an elf, an apprentice mage and two thieves, disaster was averted . . . in Izmer. (Alas, the same can not be said of the tale itself, which stinketh like the breath of a dyspeptic dragon.) But for we collectors of BAD MOVIES WE LOVE, there is a happier ending.

Laboriously expository and defiantly incomprehensible, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS seems to involve the hunt for an enchanted "rod," a threat to the prevailing "fabric of magic," the fight for democracy in the kingdom of Izmer, and the ritual humiliation of actors. In ascending order of ignominy: haughty apprentice mage bland Zoe McLellan; Skywalkerish commoner Justin Whalin (the new Sean Patrick Flanery or the new Robert Sean Leonard? Discuss); his bumbling sidekick Marlon Wayans (a black character straight out of Hollywood's 1938 playbook); Glenn Close-channeling Jeremy Irons; and fair-minded empress Thora Birch, (who models a series of headpieces cribbed from '70s disco album sleeves and throughout sustains the impression of having learned her lines phonetically.)

Those schooled in the arcana of the phenomenally successful fantasy role playing game can best rule on whether Solomon's live action adaptation is a faithful depiction of its obsessive world of elves, dwarfs, and winged things, but even a babe in dungeonland can see that the leading fire breather in this malty brew of heroics and minutiae isn't a computer generated creature, but Jeremy Irons as the archvillain Profion. All goggle-eyes, exaggerated double takes and full-throated oratory, Irons howls, whispers and rages, as he struts about in Olivier's 'Hamlet' eyeliner. Luxuriously bellowing immortal lines like ''You! Are! Mine! Now!', he attacks and guzzles every shred of scenery as if he were playing King Lear at a suburban community theater. "With a dragon army at my command I can crush the empress!" he cries joyfully, bending at the waist and making little claws out of his hands. (It's Bad Movie Nirvana!)

As Irons henchman Damodar, Bruce Payne runs a close second. A bald and burly centurion, Payne goes through the movie wearing metallic blue lipstick, (an obvious but puzzling reference to Petula Clark), terrorizing heroes Whalin and Wayans, whose destiny is to save the world - or whatever.

With his long, chestnut lashes, cherubic cheeks and silky complexion, Whalen is significantly prettier than his female love interest - wholesome, magic-wielding librarian Zoe McLellan. Aided by a lissome elf and a grumpy dwarf, our heroes embarks on a quest involving glowing rubies and secret scrolls. McLellan decides to join them, and after she kisses Whalen her glasses disappear and her backswept math-girl hairdo is magically transformed into a hipper center-part. Our heroic group must battle Payne for possession of a powerful thingummy that can control red dragons, which may or may not be bigger and meaner than the regular green kind. The thingummy itself is called a "rod," but strongly resembles our friend's old Dragon Bong. (A connection to the true Dungeons & Dragons universe at last!)

Watch for an imitation STAR WARS bar scene and ex-'Doctor Who', Tom Baker, as a wise elf.

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Dungeons & Dragons is sure to disappoint fans of the game

"Dungeons & Dragons" is sure to disappoint fans of the game. It is an okay movie but not a great one. The story is fairly weak and the adventure mediocre.

The story is about two thieves and a dwarf that stumble into a quest to get a magical staff that can control red dragons. This is in an effort to help the Empress so she can have more strength against the senators that disagree with her policy and want to overthrow her. The Empress already has the gold staff that controls gold dragons but I guess she wants all the dragons on her side.

As for the characters in the film, the best are the two thieves. Marlon Wayans, who plays one of the thieves, gives some comic relief with his squeals and witty remarks. The women in the movie were unattractive and are not the busty vixens from the artwork of the "Dungeons & Dragons" games and books. I found the Empress (Thora Birch) to be highly annoying, hardly the feeling you should get from the one running the land.

If you are not expecting too much and enjoy fantasy, you can give "Dungeons & Dragons" a try but don't say I didn't warn you.

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