Formula: Dungeons & Dragons / Your Highness
Look. No one was asking for this movie. It does feel like a situation where a studio had some IP that they felt was too ubiquitous to not have a movie. Dungeons & Dragons really does feel like the perfect marriage of all the things that have made the Lords of the Rings and Harry Potters popular in the past. However, it's also understood that the nature of the game is that it gives you the building blocks but not really the story. All D&D means to the average person is something about dwarves and wizards and dungeon masters who tell stories. For as well known as the D&D title is, it means trying to sell a general audience on the idea of a wizard, not a famous wizard character.
I don't think there is any world where D&D: Honor Among Thieves would ever be a big hit. No perfect alchemy situation that would cause it to blow up. The most they could reasonably hope for the movie is to make enough to keep the lights on. A $150 million budget is a tad high, but it's about the most it could be without getting called a bust. There are not the right pieces to get a true blockbuster audience.
Let me back up. I've said all this without saying the most important thing. I liked this movie. It was a lot of fun. Given the practical limitations of the brand, I can't imagine how they could've made a better movie. Directors (and co-writers) John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein are mostly comedy directors, although work like directing Game Night and co-writing Spider-Man: Homecoming shows that they've been building into the action comedy space.
It's hard to complain about the cast. Chris Pine is the right kind of movie star - star of action franchises but always funny - for this. Michelle Rodriguez is the patron saint of effective supporting roles in action movies. Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis fill the up-and-comers who could lead their own big movies soon*. They got the former mega-star who has slipped into supporting actor with gravitas in Hugh Grant. Probably the biggest wild card of the movie is Rege-Jean Page. In this, he's in the role I'd associate more with a huge star doing the movie a favor. Think: Brad Pitt in The Lost City. Page is more in the "future star in search of a vehicle" phase of his career. His appearance in Honor Among Thieves does nothing to tarnish that.
*Smith actually has a healthy number of lead credits already, but he's certainly still in an ascendent stage of his career.
The movie is comedy first, heist caper second, and action movie third in my estimation. It's about a father (Pine) pulling a big con in order to win his daughter back after a former friend turned her against him while he was imprisoned for a crime he definitely committed. He gathers a team, each with their own motivations, and ends up uncovering a larger plot involving an evil sorceress. It's familiar stuff but not in a bad way.
Unsurprisingly, the movie gets the comedy the best. I'm sure many jokes went over my head since I don't play D&D, but there's plenty of general stuff that I caught and liked. As the saying goes, everyone understood the assignment there. I was impressed with the heist stuff too. In particular, there's a sequence with a portal and a carriage that is super impressive. It's nicely tense and has great execution of some tricky logistics. The movie is weakest in the action movie parts and more dramatic scenes. The fights weren't super exciting. The most dramatic scene in the movie was met with some light laughs in my theater. It felt like they were building to a punchline, but it was really meant to be serious. It was a small aspect of the movie though.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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