Review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) by Touchjudge — 07 Apr 2023

Oh dear me. I am going to be in a minority here. I went to the cinema to watch this based on the rave reviews I read online. I have to say, I was quite disappointed. The characters are wafer thin with very little invested for me to get to know or like any of them.

I didn’t care much about any of them. I quickly grasped the plot and suspended belief for 2+ hours and sat back to enjoy the show. Except, I didn’t. It lacked sincerity. It lurched from one chaotic scene to the next.

There was no finesse. The jokes were telegraphed miles ahead and although people in the audience laughed, it was a polite chuckle rather than a guffaw. The movie tried to simulate the chaos, arguments and spontaneity of the D&D game.

There was strong element of “making it up as they went along,” but it failed for me in conviction and delivery. There were no moody sets or backgrounds to the action. There was no attempt to create a universe in the manner of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

It was superficial, lacked sincerity and had a comic book quality, which, for me, was a missed opportunity. One of the most addictive aspects of the D&D game is for players and dungeon masters to populate the worlds, the landscape and towns, with detailed and absorbing descriptions of inns and castles and even the battles themselves.

All this was missing here in order to move the plot from one disaster to the next. The cast is undeniably world-class but I cannot imagine in years to come that any of them will look back at this movie as anything other than a bit of fun and a pay check.

None of them had anything to get their teeth into, except perhaps Hugh Grant as the campy villain, Forge Fitzwilliam. Classic it is not. The best scene ironically is where the protagonists try to get information from a series of dead people.

Now that was really funny and resembles the sort of antics that may well occur in a real game of D&D. I so wanted to love this movie. I tried. I failed.