Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves review: thrilling franchise starter almost rolls a Natural 20
Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Regé-Jean Page star in an enjoyable adaptation of the classic tabletop RPG that even non-gamers will like
Film Reviews Dungeons & Dragons
At some point in my youth I heard the old cliché that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” For me—and probably for a great many other dorks—this was a moment of great clarity. You see, as a veteran of many noble campaigns in far-flung realms, I was already familiar with the concept of a Beholder—a giant, nefarious living eyeball (also known as an Eye Tyrant or Sphere of Many Eyes) from the original Monster Manual, Gary Gygax’s hardbound collection of foes one might face in the world of (what was then called) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Lo! How this fiendish creature dwelled in my nightmares, ready to pounce should I ever let down my guard!
With great excitement, though, I proclaim that l’essence du Beholder is redolent in the thrilling and enjoyable Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The entire picture exudes the wide-eyed (some might say immature) wonderment found around slobbering beasts and magic spells. No, you absolutely do not need to know a thing about D&D to like this. But if you have a familiarity with the Forgotten Realms, the 1980s D&D cartoon show, or if you’re just a Led Zeppelin fan, there’s something here for you. Otherwise, there’s too much going on to ever feel left out.
Chris Pine, Hollywood’s finest Chris, is in terrific form as the dopey bard-adventurer Edgin Darvis, leader of a clan of delightful thieves. At his side is Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) a kick-ass barbarian. We meet them already imprisoned after a botched robbery attempt. They aren’t bad guys, per se, but they could use (and will get!) an ethical course-correction during the film. Along the way, they team up with a sorcerer (Justice Smith) and a druid (Sophia Lillis, who will make every young nerd’s heart float), and encounter various rogues, wizards, paladins, undead warriors, obese dragons, displacer beasts, illithids, mimics, and lurkers.
What’s key—and why this movie really gets it—is that the world is more important than the story itself. D&D has always been a case of the singer, not the song—the journey as much as the destination. It’s a game system people have loved for decades, but without need of a board or a monitor. It’s bullshitting with your friends. And this movie is two hours of glorious bullshit.
The film is written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, whose previous enjoyable outings include the scripts for Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and writing-directing Game Night. One of the brilliant touches here is that our band keeps getting distracted by increasingly zany side quests. The primary goal is to rescue Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) from a castle tower. But to do that, they need a magic slate, which rests in a vault, but to get into the vault they need a charmed helmet, but to get the helmet they must engage in some necromancy, but to do that … well, it goes on and on.
Suffice to say, with this much buildup, the final battle needs to have some oomph, and it all comes together in clever and gratifying ways. Visually, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is defiant in its determination to show action in daylight, and to maintain a buoyant color palette. (Even The Underdark isn’t too dark!) When the effects-heavy sequences happen, you can actually see them, and that includes shots of a very entertaining fire-breathing winged creature who, like many of us, ought to renew his gym membership.
But the movie does have more to it than spells and beasts. Like every action-adventure property these days it’s really about family. But the cast here is so charming that it’s hard to roll your eyes too much. Indeed, the final scenes, in which our leader must make a difficult choice, are surprisingly effective. I won’t go so far as to say tears were streaming down my eyes, but it all comes together in a way that, while you can still see it a mile away, doesn’t feel too corny.
Since the release of the (spectacular) Star Trek Beyond in 2016 there’s been talk of bringing Chris Pine back to the bridge of the USS Enterprise. With the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, that’s less of an issue now. He’s found a new game to play.
133 Comments
First of all, as an avowed fan of the cartoon, I’m in.Secondly, first!
Hot take: Eric was the hottest one in the troupe.
Which one was Eric, the guy with the bow, the snotty douchebag with the shield, or the nerd?Anyway, I was all about the redhead.
The snotty douche with the shield.
Eric was the cowardly cavalier with the shield.
Hank – Blond RangerEric – Shield Carrying CavalierBobby – BarbarianPresto – MagicianDiana – AcrobatShiela – ThiefUni – Emergency RationsDungeon Master – Asshole DM
I always figured that Ranger, Cavalier, and Barbarian were all subsets of “fighter,” magician=magic user, and thief=thief (duh). Where the fuck did they get acrobat from?The cartoon should have brought a dwarf and elf into their group, too.
Eric was the cavalier, holding the shield.
More than Hank?Also, did you know about Diana?Also … Eric = Ralph Malph voice.
Ralph Malph is a big reason I hated the cartoon.
Hank == blond do-gooder with the bow
Eric == snotty douchebag with the shield, appealed most to preteen me because snark, probably (it was the early 80s)
Presto == nerd wizard
@Soylent Green – Sheila the Thief?
Its all what you are into, personally in my campaign I’d be the middle of a Diana, Sheila sandwhich
Roll 2D10 for your chances of avoiding the curse of cancerAIDS
Bring it. I’ve got built in immunity from listening to Dawes on repeat.
BUT DO YOU HAVE OWNAGE – ZMFI miss that guy. Also, it’s BLURST you stupid monkey.
ZMF = Legend.
There can be only one ZMF.I will say it is a strange thing to be nostalgic for better commentator boards of days (decades) past.
Love D&D, hated that cartoon!I’m definitely going to see this.
Eric was the only sane member of the party.
Because he was so legitimately freaked out all the time? Which makes sense because who wouldn’t be!?
Exactly!
You really really will like the labyrinth scenes then…Spoilers…..Seriously big spoilers………Live action D& D cartoon cameos!When I saw the group of adventurers with the short barbarian, and the blue cloaked red head..I thought…it can’t be? . But yeah you see all of them in the cage ..Presto , Eric, Hank ..the whole lot ( and they’re named in the end credits)
And to think parents’ groups in the ‘80s said this would lead to devil worship. It’s 2022, and my kid’s in a sanctioned D&D club at his school (Catholic school, no less); they’re going to see this as a group this weekend.(It’s been fun telling him how crazy people were panicking about this game back in the day, and showing him a version of that panic in Stranger Things 4)
I am actually really surprised that my sons high school doesn’t have a table top gaming club. He’s got a group already but he was looking for more ways to play and the school let him down. We had one back in the 90s but before it could start the teacher and students had to appeal to the school board to allow it and the rules was absolutely no Dungeons and Dragons could be played. So we played wholesome games like Rifts, Shadowrun and World of Darkness games(like Vampire and Werewolf).
Shadowrun is fine, since the future Pope declared that magic was not inherently evil.
I just looked up who the Pope was currently in Shadowrun and was disappointed to find out it was just some normal human. I was hoping for a dragon.
That’s why I campaigned for President Dunkelzahn…
Some of my fondest RPG memories come from playing Shadowrun when FASA did the year long presidential campaign stuff. The Super Tuesday adventures were all really fun. My group all voted for president(it was a whole mail in campaign thing) and we went to Gencon to see who would win and play in the con exclusive adventures.In hindsight I suspect that the year of voting by mail was all just for show, since it was clear Big D was meant to win(and then get assassinated) to move the meta story along. Still was a fun time to be playing the game
Shadowrun is hands down my favorite RPG. Just had to say that.
I am still playing Rifts 30 years later and it has so much darker shit in it than D&D. Clearly the school board never saw the cover of the initial book.
Rifts: when your favorite genre is “all of the above”
It was always much more fun to read the Rifts rulebooks than to actually play it.
Rifts: For anyone whose favorite genre is “All of the Above”
My friends wanted to play ttrpgs back in high school, and I had a sit down with my parents about it, they were so concerned with DnD devilry. But they were a okay with Rifts because it didn’t have that satanic stigma to it.
It’s funny to me that there are now outright After School Satan Clubs.It’s less funny that they are being threatened by christofascist dicks.
I was a child of the era who played, and my parents mostly thought it was cool that we were using our imaginations so completely. We made our own modules and went way off-script in the purchased one. I think there was one mom with a kid in our grade level who started going on about it being immoral and everyone just rolled their eyes. Oh, and Hoffman – everyone knows the ONLY 20 is a natural 20. Nice try, poseur.
You can get 20 without rolling a critical, if the dice and your modifiers add up to it.
That’s a picture of a nat 18.
That seems to have been more of a US than a UK thing. In the early 80s I was playing D&D at lunchtime at my Catholic boys’ school with a teacher who was a member of the religious order that ran the school, supervising.
It’s 2023.
A wizard enchanted my calendar
Fuck that wizard
My start down the path to TTRPG addiction was in my high school RPG club, playing Talislanta, of all things, but that quickly shifted to AD&D 2nd Edition. I am forever grateful for that motley crew of fellow weirdos.
Satanic panic, baby! I was forbidden from playing D&D for that very reason.
My dad still gives me crap about D&D and me going to hell.
I am 48.
KISS, D&D, Alice Cooper, rock music in general, LOTR (except “The Hobbit” for reasons known only to them”), etc., etc. All things that led immediately to devil worship . . .
Opinions might vary on who the best Chris is (I say Evert) but I am glad Chris Pine is in this. And always happy when Michelle Rodriguez turns up & is a badass
I thought best Chris is Chris Bell, but I’m a music snobI’ll show myself out.
Chris Cornell!RIP
Wait. Shit.I fucked up. I fucked up bad.
LULZ
By the way, that’s a hi res pic, and if you expand it, you can the perfectly-even 23mm-deep layer of foundation they spackled onto ol’ Garth to get his country complexion pop-star smooth.
It’s like looking at a fresh sheet of gyprock!
Don’t worry. Ain’t no one gonna bring you down.
You and your sister both share this opinion.
Well, I AM the Cosmos…
“Was.” The best Chris “WAS” Chris Bell. RIP.
Is Diamantopoulos in the running?
He was, until footage of him as Robin Williams from the Mork & Mindy biopic accidentally leaked.
Just the one shot in the trailer of him with the lute was perfect. He’s got just the right comic sensibility for this sort of thing.
I vote for Farley
As long as it’s not Kattan.
well it isn’t Ruth’s Chris, that’s for sure
I’m holding out for a Chris that’ll make me jump jump.
Hynde. Don’t get me wrong.
The best Chris is -tine Baranski. I will brook no arguments.
Good, because it’s pretty much all she does.
And always happy when Michelle Rodriguez turns up & is a badass Me too, but I usually phrase it “when Michelle Rodriguez turns up”. The rest is a given…
This looked fun in the trailer, but ‘…in the trailer’ has been a qualifier that for many years led more to future disappointment than enjoyment. I’m glad to hear it’s actually good! I haven’t been to theatres in 3 years (I kept forgetting to see Avatar, so I’m kinda hoping it’ll get a mid-Summer re-release or something) but I think this might be the one to break that streak.
They had a sneak preview showing a couple of Sundays ago and I was able to catch it with 2 people who never played DnD. I’m now a grey-bearded grogard, cutting my teeth on 1st Ed back in the 80’s. All of us loved it, for different reasons. If there’s any movie to bring you back into the theater, you won’t find a more pure fun one than this.
“Whole Lotta Love,” not the Led Zeppelin song choice for the trailer I expected, but I do like it
Considering that Thor: Ragnarok appropriated “Immigrant Song” for the rest of our lives, the choices of Led Zep songs to use was sooooooo limited.
Yeah, it’s odd to choose “I’m Gonna Fuck You With My Large Dick, Metaphorically” over “Reference to Fantasy Literature on Which This Game Was Based” in the Zep catalogue.
Do you want them to get sued by whatever soulless ghouls who own the Tolkien Estate now?
I don’t care personally. But I know of quite a few people with Patreon pages and a still-cooling temper that might enjoy it.
Int. Marketing Department at Entertainment One
Marketing Assistant: “We need music for the trailer, I know they’re expensive but can we get Zep? Nerds associate high fantasy with Zep, kids will think it’s cool rock music and other Mums and Dads will love the needle drop.”Marketing Lead: “LOVE. IT. How about Immigrant Song?”
Assistant: “I’m worried that’s been done to death at this point. What else can we get?”
Lead: “Kashmir? Ramble On? Battle of the Evermore?!? They have so many fantasy-adjacent songs”Assistant: “hmmmm, how about Whole Lotta Love!?”
Lead: “I’m not sure that’s really…”
Assistant: “I know right!! Sweet guitar solo, bro!”
Me personally, I think they should have gone in an unexpected classic rock with fantasy undertones direction:Jethro. Fucking. Tull.(Mostly I want more Tull in pop culture. Locomotive Breath in Season 2 of Fargo made me really happy.)
Prefer one of Ian’s live, Mad fuckin’ Scotsman flute solos:
It’s easy to fall down a small YouTube rabbit hole of reaction videos to Ian’s fluting. Obviously the best are professional flautists marveling at him. But I also like The Charismatic Voice’s Elizabeth reaction videos. I do wonder if her impression of Ian would be changed any knowing that he fucked up his singing voice by way of “wrong” flute technique.
There’s a kid who does transcriptions of these things, with the notation playing along underneath (with some humorous commentary):Friend of mine’s a high school music teacher and flautist, and I sent her that one. Of course, she’s properly trained in flute, but was blown away and played it for her kids in class. Legend has Ian actually plays the flute “wrong” with improper fingering, and he only found out when his daughter started taking formal flute lessons and realised that when he watched her learning. But that’s (prog) rock for ya.
Incredible String Band
Hunting Girl
Yeah, something off Songs From the Wood might feel thematically appropriate.Maybe not Pibroch…
My formative D&D days were full of Rush and Blue Öyster Cult, as accurately described in SLC Punk!
2 things: 1) fb says it ROLLS a NAT 20, not that it almost does, false advertising!2) nice to read an invested review
Does this film have any hearty dwarf women with hair on their chin you can hold on to?
You should ask this in the past comment section of LOTR:Rings of Power.
I’m not going to check, but I’m willing to bet that damn abomination of Terry Pratchett’s work in The Watch doesn’t have the balls to give female dwarves beards.
Hmmm… I’m really not sure of a good point from which to start in on that, but boy howdy am I sure you wouldn’t like what they actually did.
I’ll just take Rhianna’s word for it and consider it absolute dogshit.
The other books were must-haves for actually learning how to play, but nothing beat the coolness of the Monster Manual. The Beholder definitely got cooler over time. A lot of the early monster artwork was school notebook-quality.
That one on the top right is clearly stoned.
Top-Left has the sexiest eye… that’s what we’re looking for here… right?RIGHT?!
“Bedroom eye”?
TV eye.
I always found the shoddy artwork rather charming, like the game was made by the same middle-schoolers that were playing it. In many ways the first two decades of tabletop roleplaying games were part of a folk art tradition, with people following creative impulses to make their own iterations of the game with a small pool of collaborators who did the work of writing and illustrating the books not because they were proficient writers and illustrators, but because they were there and they wanted to. You can see every flaw, but you can feel the infectious enthusiasm behind those flaws.In the early 2000s roleplaying games started to “go Hollywood” and if anything have gotten too professional. I don’t want slick artwork and high productions values. I want the kind of home made writing and illustration that you can only get when you’re driven by creative ambitions and don’t have time to worry about your limitations.
Since most of that artwork was by a group of guys sitting around a Wisconsin basement making shit up as they went, you’re not far off.
My siblings and I had first editions of the hardcovers back in the day and the ramshackle illustrations were part of the charm.
That’s absolutely true. It’s also important to remember that the earlier books…and I’m thinking particularly about Deities and Demigods…often had art with boobies. Which was VERY important for me at that time.
If you have access to Amazon Prime (and I think maybe also Tubi), you should check out the documentary “Eye of the Beholder: The Are of Dungeons and Dragons”. It features past and present D&D art and artists and has some cool details about those early artists.
The owlbear, however, went the other direction. It started off looking like one of the scarier Jim Henson creations in 1st edition AD&D and has gotten cuter and cuter over time.
I like the 1975 version that looks like a inflamed testicle that smoked too much weed.
I have friends who love D&D, friends who hate D&D (the system more than the setting), and friends who’ve never played it, and we’re all excited for this film. I think this might have potential to be one of those surprise hits that gets in demographics no one expected.
After two decades of ponderous fantasy franchises, I think audiences are ready for a fun, breezy fantasy movie that doesn’t try too hard to be epic. I know I’m looking forward to it.
And yet no one watched Willow god DAMN it
I didn’t but I’ve heard from many of my friends that while it’s a good nostalgic trip, it’s not a terribly great storyline. Sad, as Willow was one of my favorite fantasy movies growing up.
It was like the wind.
That show was fucking awesome too. So loose and vibe-y and wacky, just how I like my fantasy. Especially the Shattered Sea episode.
In related news, the AV Club now is issuing press releases thinly disguised as movie reviews.
I’m a D&D nerd, so I’m hoping for the best for this movie, but this review does have a “Use my pull quote in the marketing vibe” to it, yeah.
I saw it on Sunday and it was a lot of fun. I’m not a D&D nerd though… those kids wouldn’t let me play with them. 🙁
Too unpopular for D&D is unpopular indeed.
The review does feel a mite overeager, but if they don’t put “two hours of glorious bullshit” in commercials for the movie it’s really their loss.
If you talk about anything that can be bought, in the media, then it’s both.
Intellect devourers aren’t illithids, only created by them.
Gelatinous Cube!
How’d you know?
You’d think that, after Bloodrayne, Michelle Rodriguez would avoid swords’n’sorcery at all costs. After all, how could she ever top that triumph?
I really didn’t expect this to be good, even tho I find Chris Pine to be very likeable. Cool okay.
Spectacular Star Trek Beyond? Well now I don’t trust this review.
I hope it’s this good (io9 was also squeeing a bit, but that’s Codega for you), since this review caught my eye too.“Still, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” feels like Daley and Goldstein, who also co-wrote with Michael Gilio, asked ChatGPT [to] “write a Marvel movie except with ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ characters.” Seconds later, this spit out.”Ouch.
I found that review and holy shit what a fucking hack. Half the review is divided by the guy wanking over his ChatGPT obsession and listing other things the actors appear in. I haven’t seen this much obvious filler to satisfy a word count since 8th grade.
So, it’s guardians of the ga…humm, guardians of the magical realm but with a better Chris. OK sounds cool.
Pretty much exactly, and it’s not a bad thing.
But what is the movie’s THACO?
I’m pleased to hear this is good. I’m not a D&Der, though I’m generally nerdy and totally fine with folks who are into D&D. But when I first saw the trailer for this I thought it looked epically stupid. I always reserve judgement to once I’ve see a movie, but I was going to skip this one until maybe it was streaming. But my kids want to see it and now I’m glad to hear it’s fun and does the source material justice.
Ohh, “Game Night” by the writer-directors was immensely enjoyable. I’ll probably catch this on HBO in a couple months, though.
I remember Free Guy got similarly high review and audience score and that movie was utter dog shit. That said I’m of the opinion that the best movies on Rotten Tomatoes hover around 50% or have high review scores but terrible audience scores.
“What’s key[…]is that the world is more important than the story itself.”Okay, but this is a movie, not a game of DnD.
They really have to do a MCU multiverse thing where Chris Pine is Captain America (Maybe universe 1701 in Secret Wars or something). We’d all get a huge kick out of it!
People still play this? This was big in the 80’s!
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/04/02/dungeons-dragons-honor-among-thieves-lets-the-good-times-roll/
Even without being a gamer, I enjoyed this a lot. It’s reminiscent of
Guardians Of The Galaxy. Hopefully it’s more popular than Willow &
SHAZAM! 2, which were also irreverent fantasy adventures. Now please get
everyone you know to start calling this movie DADHAT.