Dungeons & Dragons
The Ultimate Battle Between Good and Evil
In a world where the forces of evil have magical powers and peasants are powerless, only a rag-tag group of young adventurers can save the day. Profion (Academy Award®-winner Jeremy Irons, Reversal Of Fortune) is the diabolical mage who plots to take over the kingdom of Izmer. The Empress Savina (Thora Birch, American Beauty) fights to return peaceful times to her subjects. Now, the hopes of Izmer rest with Snails (Marlon Wayans, Scary Movie), Ridley (Justin Whalin, TV's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman) and the fighters brave enough to help them battle the dark forces of Profion. Dazzling special effects and spellbinding performances conjure up a supernatural film that brings the adventure home to you.
Member Reviews
A bad film...actually worth seeing. - estefan
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most ridiculously bad fantasy films I've seen. Every bad decision a director can make, appears on the screen. The screenplay is awful, mixing bad humour and embarrassing dialogue with the complexity of a first draft. The special effects are dreadful on every level, the action is dull, the acting from the leads is horrendous and it really is a generic fantasy picture most of the time. And yet it's one of those films so bad, it's weirdly enjoyable and the credit for that goes to two people. Jeremy Irons hams it up the billionth degree, sneering and howling and just having the time of his life. Irons' performance here is the king of over-the-top ridiculous acting. The only disappointment is that he is off-screen for large chunks of time. We actually his henchman more than we see the main villain (and the henchman is also hilariously bad, in his own right). Thora Birch, meanwhile, delivers one of the worst performances I have ever seen. This isn't even high school play-level acting, it's that atrocious. Her lack of interest in her dialogue makes it so entertaining to watch and putting her in the same room as Irons increases the hilarity even further. This is a bad film, but it's one that needs to be seen for Irons and Birch alone.Twenty years of waiting for THIS?! - Superdave
I cannot imagine a more incompetently executed film given its production budget, or a bigger disappointment given the goodwill behind its name. Everything - EVERYTHING! - in this film reeks of amateurism and incompetence. The lurid 'special' effects are largely unconvincing and provide occasional unintentional laughs, while the script assembles every adventure movie cliche character it can scrape up - the cowardly thief who is actually heroic under duress, the sorcerer's apprentice who wants to use magic on her own, the orphaned kid looking for revenge against the evil lord - and dishes them out amidst some of the worst dialog in movie history. The leading actors can't give useful performances thanks to incompetent direction and star Jeremy Irons doesn't even bother to try. His turn as the evil lord basically comes down to strutting about arrogantly and yelling a lot, then picking up his paycheck. The action sequences are poorly staged and come off flat, the comedy relief doesn't provide relief of ANY kind, and the whole affair stumbles along predictably to its obvious showdown and then mercifully ends. The only part of the movie that even hints that it's supposed to be a big budget spectacular is the set design work, which is actually reasonably convincing for the desired period and only makes the viewers wish they could use the sets and shoot their own better version.
It actually amazes me that with twenty years of background material and hundreds of D & D novels and game scenarios written over the years that THIS was what the producers decided to shoot. Any random writer of D & D novels, indeed any random fantasy writer at all, could have put together a more interesting story and assembled more literate dialog and more interesting characters. This was not just disappointing, it was shockingly bad. The whole project should have been aborted at the screenplay stage until a better script, better director and better cast were available.Disappointing... - Raidue
Aside from being based on Dungeons and Dragons, this film had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Gaping plot holes, terrible acting, and mediocre special effects all make for a thoroughly disappointing, if not painful, movie experience. Waste not thy money. Heck, waste not the effort of picking up the box at the rental store and considering it. That's a whole minute of your life that you'll never get back. Think how I feel, having seen this tripe.
Member Reviews
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A bad film...actually worth seeing. - estefan
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most ridiculously bad fantasy films I've seen. Every bad decision a director can make, appears on the screen. The screenplay is awful, mixing bad humour and embarrassing dialogue with the complexity of a first draft. The special ...Twenty years of waiting for THIS?! - Superdave
I cannot imagine a more incompetently executed film given its production budget, or a bigger disappointment given the goodwill behind its name. Everything - EVERYTHING! - in this film reeks of amateurism and incompetence. The lurid 'special' effects are largely ...Disappointing... - Raidue
Aside from being based on Dungeons and Dragons, this film had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Gaping plot holes, terrible acting, and mediocre special effects all make for a thoroughly disappointing, if not painful, movie experience. Waste not thy money. ...