Dungeons & Dragons - The Movie

                  Reviewed by Fernando Poo

A large part of my youth came courtesy of TSR inc.  Their Dungeons
and Dragons role-playing game ensured that an entire generation of
sallow faced oiks spent even less time in direct sunlight but
instead with a head full of adventures involving large scaly
creatures and enclosed spaces.  Indeed the first computer programs
I wrote were character generators and the first games involved Orc
bashing in caverns.  I always claimed I was years ahead of my time
and as if to prove a point, twenty years later along comes the
film of the same.

The alleged hero is played with, little aplomb, by little Jimmy
Olsen.  No not the longhaired lover from Liverpool, but the office
junior off the superman TV show, whose name will remain unknown as
he shall thus be referred to as Jim.  He and his mate, hereafter
referred to as Buffoon, attempt to make their living as thieves in
the city of Sumdall in the mystical land of Izmer.

The land is ruled by a young Empress along with a council of Mages
and an ability to summon dragons. The Empress, complete with wacky
makeup and eccentric dress sense, spends most of her time in
serious discussion with ambassadors in large auditoriums.  Perhaps
all young lady rulers are like this, or does she remind me of
someone?  I can't quite put my finger on it, although I doubt if
she would condone a course of action that would lead to war.

One of the mages, Profion (played by a slumming Jeremy Irons),
intends to topple the inexperienced Empress Savina (Thora Birch)
acquire her mystical sceptre and rule the land himself.  Jeremy is
aided in his evil machinations by an evil baldy bloke who commands
the imperial army known as the Crimson Guard.  Jeremy Irons and
evil baldy bloke attempt to outcamp each other with their villainy
throughout. Talking of camp baldy blokes, guess who turns up as
head of the thieves' guild and uses little Jim to retrieve a
crystal from his maze full of traps and obstacles?  That's right,
Richard O'Brian makes a cameo in a scene which was only missing a
hand full of screeching yuppies in order to have Channel 4
pressing lawsuit buttons.

Our erstwhile heroes become involved when they attempt to burgle a
magical establishment.  During their bumbling attempts to liberate
the inventory therein the evil baldy bloke turns up and threatens
the elderly mage and his young female assistant in order to obtain
a magical artefact.  The dim-witted duo witness the elderly mage
sacrifice himself to the evil baldy bloke as some sort of lesson
to his young assistant who then reluctantly teams up with Jim and
Buffoon in order to reclaim the artefact and save the day.
Buffoon dies thus making it personal for Jim.

You wait an hour for a dragon and then a shedful turn up at once
as the climax of the film sees the Empress and Jeremy do battle
using their sceptres to control entire armies of the buggers.
This is followed by a swift duel with glowing swords between Jim
and the evil baldy bloke.  The amateurish direction and flat
dialogue really is exceptional at this point and although the
quality of the CG effects is acceptable, they are badly thought
out and poorly integrated into the live action.

The heroes are rewarded with a huge ceremony thrown by the
empress, although we don't actually get to see the ceremony.
Perhaps the $36 million budget couldn't quite stretch to all the
extras, although maybe they could have used cardboard cut-outs
like they did in Star Wars.  In fact it's one of the few ideas
which wasn't stolen directly from Lucas's masterpiece.  Closer
inspection of the sleeve shows that even the creators of Dungeons
and Dragons compare their film to Star Wars.  And indeed the only
enjoyable way to watch this film is to play spot the similarities
with a certain George Lucas double trilogy.

With a title like Dungeons and Dragons you would be forgiven for
having certain expectations of a product, or rather two
expectations about its contents and D&D barely comes up with the
goods.  This unconvincing half- hearted attempt at the sword &
sorcery genre would probably have Tolkien's ghost spinning in his
grave and wishing he'd become a watchmaker were it not for the
sterling work carried out by Peter Jackson on the Lord of the
Rings trilogy this year.  As it is D&D borrows heavily from many
sources, but not quite cleverly enough to pull it off.  Leaving us
with a basic plot punctuated with well-worn clich‚s and carried by
predictable stereotypes.
















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