Review of Dungeons & Dragons (2000) by Frisby 2 — 03 Nov 2012

I remember catching this movie a few months back, & didn't look it up here because I actually though this movie was made for tv seeing the cheap look it had & the sci-fi channel original movie elements it showed. Well, it wasn't.

I will admit I didn't really like it, but I also didn't really hate it. It was just really cheap-looking, with some weird acting performances (& some bad ones too), & overall a very geeky movie.

This is based on the board game of the same name, but I haven't played it, nor do I plan on playing. It's just way too nerdy; just as nerdy as Star Wars.

The plot was pretty straight forward, but the story seems too cliche, & a typical "save the kingdom from disaster & evil with a special weapon found in a mysterious place" bullshit. And it also felt like a horrible Legend of Zelda gameplay rip-off. And don't even get me started on how this movie has dungeon scenes that ripped-off "Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom".

The acting was not only bad, but also over-dramatically bad. Some of the actors would either look lifeless & bored, to plain out underacted &/or over dramatic. The direction was nothing too special & it looked very cheap, & I'm not just talking about the cheap camera quality either. The actors are pretty decent choices, since they're all talented actors for that matter, but they're all miscast choices, & they do not look anything like what they're playing...actually, scratch that, the actors do not make believable characters for what they play. Justin Whalin on the other hand, is the only actor in this movie who fits his character & role right, & that's only because he looks like a character found in any medieval fantasy movie or TV show, & he also looks like an Eragon reject. The villain in this movie is so laughably bad that I almost choked on my own saliva. The villain is bald, not that it's a bad thing to be bald, who wears coral blue number 2 semi-gloss lipstick (lol Spongebob reference), & says his dialogue in the slowest way possible. No really, every time he would say something, it would take him about 5 minutes to finish it all, I swear I could take a 15-minute shower as he begins his talking, & when I exit, dry, put on my clothes & some deodorant, & walk back to continue watching it, he'd either just be finishing the last couple of words or still talking.

Jeromy Irons played his character in such a badly acted way. He was the actor who was the most over-dramatic in this movie, hell in the entire fight scene between the dragons, he became a human vibrator at one point. And then there's Thora Birch's character who was the most under-dramatic character & actor of the movie. Her performance gave no emotions & had no impact upon the character.

The special effects were nothing special, but they do give you the world of medieval dragons & castles any movie of the theme should. But if you want to see some CGI that was good & better than this for it's own time, watch Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow". And the score was beautiful too, probably the thing I really liked in this movie. The costumes on the other hand, are pretty cheap, & they look like nothing more than some things worn by geeks at a costume party or reunion of the Dungeons & dragons fan base. As for the sword fight coordination, wow, just, wow, it's so simple & plain that you ask yourself if the coordinator of the sword fighting was a 10 year old. What you get from the sword fighting is nothing more that up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, up, up, down, down, up, & so on! It's like a bad video game sword fight!

And I can tell you right now that Courtney Solomon is a horrible director at best, no worse than most other ones, but still horrible. She also gave us "An American Haunting", one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen, & definitely one of the worst movies ever made. Courtney cannot direct a good movie even if her life depended on it.

So, the best I can describe this movie is like the best thing the Sci-Fi channel can give you, only it actually went into theaters & wasn't on that channel. Hell it even ends the credits with a screen shot of the movie, like all bad straight to DVD or Scy Fy channel movies do!

I wouldn't recommend this movie, but if you want to see how bad it really is, then go ahead & check it out. You're better off having a blast laughing at this than you would with a movie like House of the Dead.