‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” makes a swashbuckling leap from board game to big screen thanks to the charisma of Chris Pine and some very special friends. (I keep hearing that Chris Pine is The Chris! Not Hemsworth or Evans or even Pratt.)
I knew zip about the popular board game but this film stands on its own merits.
Writers/directors John Francis Dailey and Jonathan Goldstein (“Game Night”) manage to pay homage to the board game, but amp up the wattage with exceptional quips, dialogue, art direction, F/X and plot.
The film opens with Edgin (Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), prisoners pleading for parole as their crime was for a noble reason — the search for a relic that will raise the dead in order to bring back Edgin’s wife and daughter Kira’s (Chloe Coleman) mother.
Edgin (Pine), a charming lute-playing bard is a single father living in Faerun, with his little girl and a muscle-bound macha friend played by Rodriguez.
Part thief and part barbarian, the axe-wielding Holga helps with raising his motherless child.
She was lost when the home was invaded by the treacherous Red Wizards looking to retrieve an important relic.
With his magical misfits, paladin Xenk (Rege-Jean Page), iffy sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and Holga, they face off against adventurer-turned-tyrant Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) and the Red Wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) in the search for this relic.
Along the way they pick up a tiny Druid, Doric (Sophia Lillis), who shape-shifts into many animals — her primary one being an owlbear.
Their magic doesn’t always work at first but with some cheerleading and a lot of faith from Edgin things always seem to work out.
There was an earlier film version of Dungeons and Dragons in 2000 by New Line Cinema that was badly panned.
However, this charming version is a lucrative $71.5 million and counting hit for Paramount Pictures.
Go see it. And take the family!
Genevieve Cooney is a lifelong cinephile and holds film degrees from UT and a Masters of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute’s Conservatory Program. She went on to work in the film industry as a script reader, a story editor and then vice president of development for an international film company.
