Dungeons & Dragons
Avoid this movie like the plague it is.

It's all fun and roleplaying games until somebody loses an eye.

Before long, I'm going to start developing a Pavlovian response to the sight of actor Bruce Payne. According to behavioral science, I may start sweating and feeling the unbridled "fight or flight" response upon utterance of his very name. It wasn't enough that he was the worst actor to ever appear on the flashy Canadian espionage series La Femme Nikita. I mean, we're talking about the man perhaps whose greatest achievement in the last millennium was to be a bargain basement Julian Sands in Warlock III. But still I foolishly soldiered on. Suffering through two plus hours of the worst performance ever preserved on celluloid in the tragically, spectacularly bad Highlander: Endgame, I had believed I truly had seen the worst the universe had to offer.

Then I saw Dungeons & Dragons.

When I first heard about the adaptation of this beloved -- if cheesy -- role playing game that owed more to Ron E. Howard than J.R.R. Tolkien, I was skeptical, but still intrigued. Dude, it had Jeremy Irons. He wins awards, and has that toff accent, and stuff. Zoe McLellan had impressed me terribly with her guest spots on Star Trek: Voyager and The Invisible Man. I was blessedly ignorant of the Wayans Brothers, and knew no better where Marlon was concerned. And Thora Birch had played Kevin Spacey's kid, and he's one of my all time favorite acting Gods, so she had to not suck, right? And I even had a soft spot for Justin Whalin from his Jimmy Olsen days, having had the pleasure of his company briefly when 70 or so odd fans of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman were given a set tour and a meeting with the cast and crew back in summer of 1994. Justin seemed like a terribly nice young man, and since that day, I have always had a soft spot for him. When I heard he'd been attached to the project for years, I desperately hoped the film wouldn't suck, for his sake.

God save us from bad movies and Bruce Payne -- though come to think of it, the two really go hand in hand, so God can save us from both at once...

The second I saw Bruce Payne, shaved head and blue lipstick and Batman-esque leather armor and all appear onscreen, I knew that hope was in vain.

Okay, here's the deal: Evil Bad Guy Profion wants to keep the status quo -- i.e., mages have all the power, magic-less serfs continue to live in wretched poverty. But idealistic young Empress Savina wants to give everyone an equal vote, and do away with centuries of oppression. Silly girl. So Profion is trying to create a magic sceptre just like the Empresses' that will give him control over the dragon armies. Except all attempts thus far have met with dismal, crunchy failure.

In step our Heroes, two bumbling magic-less thieves, Ridley and his partner Snails. The lads are ripping off the Magic School when they are caught by young Sorcerer's Apprentice Marina, whose mentor is trying to locate the mythical Rod of Savrille -- a magic sceptre that controls Red Dragons -- for the Empress so that if the Council takes her magic sceptre that controls Gold Dragons away, she'll have the back-up sceptre. Profion's hired monkey, Damodar, shows up just in time to learn about the rod and kill Marina's mentor. She escapes, thieves in tow, with the map to the treasure. The rest of the movie involves Marina, Ridley, Snails and their cohorts trying to get to the rod first, so Profion can't get his mitts on it and do a Pinky & the Brain. Of course, they are joined by the requisite Elf and Dwarf, lots of dungeons, mazes, swords, Orks and Beholders, and Ridley turns out to be destined to find the rod, swaps spit with Marina, and saves the day. Along the way we get to see nifty British actors in sad cameos such as Richard O'Brien (Rocky Horror's Riff Raff) as the King of Thieves, and Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor) as a wise old Elf who lives in a Wookie village.

This'd be the second part of the title. Photo © 2000 New Line Productions, Inc.

Sound entertaining? It wasn't. Plot points were raised, and then ignored -- or edited out for reasons that this humble critic cannot comprehend. The direction was out-and-out unredeemable, and even actors I've seen shine in other work (except Payne. He's not the least bit shiny ever) sucked beyond the telling of it in this film. Whalin as the brash young lower-class-with-a-chip on his shoulder thief Ridley, and McLellan as young mage Marina tried their best with the material, but when you're delivering lines like "Great Mage, I never doubted your power" you're pretty much doomed from the start.

For what could have been a fun popcorn movie, D&D the Movie is instead an experience not unlike Chinese water torture, only with acid instead of water.

Oh, where to begin? Perhaps with Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright's script, which was so appallingly bad if defied even MST3K-style heckling? Or how Thora Birch, as the Childlike Empr -- so sorry, I mean, Empress Savina, came across as a bored thirteen-year-old girl playing dress up, without the slightest concept of how to play either period, or fantasy? Or how about Jeremy Irons, gleefully giving it his all, chewing scenery with gusto and belting out dialogue so bad, and with such enthusiasm and over-the-top villainy I started to wonder if I had somehow stumbled into an episode of Wizards and Warriors, only without Captain Power and that blonde chick from Newhart?

And he almost had our respect after Requiem For A Dream, too. How sad.

When you are actually mourning the premature death of a Wayans Brother, you know you've sunk to depths that you, as a genre fan and avid B-movie goer, have never sunk to before.

Forget this movie. Rent Record of Lodoss War, and pretend you never ever heard of Courtney Solomon.

DROOL FACTOR: Justin Whalin certainly filed out nicely, and has matinee-idol looks enough for this kind of role. He gives it his all, and does his best to sell even the worst lines. You have to give him props for that. And for the lads, Zoe McLellan is lovely and charming as snobby Marina who learns that those non-magical schlubs can be kinda cute and therefore no longer worthy of her utter contempt, and Kristen Wilson has that whole "I could kick your ass and still look dishy while doing so" thing working for her as Norda. Too bad that's all that was working for her, tho.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: There's a nasty tentacled parasite that Profion implants in Damodar that gives a squirm-in-your-seat performance during Marina's interrogation scene. Unfortunately, it's really really obvious that it's a CGI nasty tentacled parasite.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: McLellan as Marina starts out really cool -- with a librarian hairdo and spectacles that make her a dead ringer for Rachael Weiss in The Mummy, she hurls firebolts and does all sorts of nifty sorceress-in-training stuff. However, as the film progresses, she is basically reduced to bait to be rescued by Ridley. Also, it's never explained exactly why she can't do any of her nifty spells when they might actually be useful. Norda the Elf sure looked cool -- except there was absolutely zero depth to her performance. She's an idea, and a metal breastplate, and pointed ears without much character development who seems to exist solely as both a plot device, and as a pretty girl for Marlon Wayans to drool over. As for Birch as Savina, she was a really really really pale imitation of Queen Amidala, with even sillier costumes.

-- Tara O'Shea

Dungeons & Dragons is now playing. Well, somewhere, anyway.

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