Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves

SnarkAI Score: 90/100

tldr:

The reviewer describes the movie as a fun and faithful portrayal of a D&D campaign, with plenty of nods to the source material and a lot of heart. The diverse cast of characters and the various backstories add depth and complexity to the story. The humor and slapstick elements add to the enjoyment, while the use of various D&D creatures and references will appeal to fans of the game. The reviewer does mention some minor disappointments, such as the lack of visible magic from Chris Pine's Bard and the absence of Drow in the Underdark, but overall this seems like a highly entertaining and well-crafted movie.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr sumary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI generated based on the reviewers descriptions of scenes.

This is a very large adventuring party.

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Natural 20/10. This movie is just so much fun.

From the random scenery changes as they travel to their consistently failing plans and slapstick escapes and their reliance on random objects to solve their problems, to the paladin with a stick up his ass, it's not just a movie set in the world of D&D, it's a movie about a D&D campaign in action. It clearly loves the source material, and has enormous fun with itself, while also having a lot of heart.

We get a long intro showcasing the danger of a character who lasts 15 seconds with our Barbarian. A wonderful scene of a Bard using charisma to stall, accidentally achieving their pardon but not discovering they had been pardoned as they'd already enacted their breakout and now are wanted again. We get a wide scattering of the races of Forgotten Realms, we see Dragonborn, Aarakocra (Squaa!), Dwarves, Elves, Tieflings, populating the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms.

The various tragic backstories of the Party that they all have is great.

The Paladin is every Paladin played by a player. Deliberately humorless, honorable to the point of nonsense and so rigid they walk over rocks rather than around them. It's amazing. It's a testament to the skill of the actor that the character is still charming.

Displacer Beast

The displacer beasts are fantastic. The Gelatinous Cube is awesome. The Mimic was great. The fact the first Speak with Dead fails due to accidentally using all the questions is so dead on for a D&D game with a vindictive DM that it's almost too on the nose. As an added bonus, it was great to see the party of the original D&D cartoon make an appearance in the background.

Themberchaud!

Of course, Elmister turns up. Its not an adventure in the Forgotten Realms if that old meddler doesn't show his face.

The way they get people out of the arena is fantastic and I can just hear the DM saying - 'OK, give me a roll'. I've heard of Chekov's gun, but this may be the first Chekov's Balloon.

It was a little disappointing we didn't see Chris Pine's Bard do any visible magic through song though.

Seems a waste to go into the Underdark and not see any Drow, but equally I can see why they decided not to do a Community 'So, we're just gonna ignore that hate crime, huh?'

The film gets +1 bonus to hit from the characters' names, like Jarnathan, and the fact that Simon had to pause when asked his surname, and then invent one on the spot because it had never come up before. And who could forget the Barbarian Holga Kilgore!