REVIEW: ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’

While watching Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I felt a strange and unfamiliar feeling. I finally realized what it was: fun!

Remember fun? It’s a feeling that used to be common until ideology took over and ruined everything. Simple pleasures like “Baby It’s Cold Outside” are no longer accepted as a fun song due to ideologists interpreting it as a depiction of date rape. Plus, films like Blazing Saddles would never be made these days because of the potential controversy surrounding its humor.

It seems like people creating popular art are censoring themselves to make properties that are acceptable to cultural gatekeepers. However, this approach doesn’t allow for the creation of fun content. Fun is free-spirited and emerges from improvisation, not from a series of strict guidelines.

So, could Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves be made politically correct? Absolutely. For example, Disney’s Strange World failed to impress audiences due to the announcement of its central character having a same-sex crush. Nowadays, anything can be politicized, and this approach doesn’t result in fun content.

However, the writer-directors of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, have avoided these pitfalls. They managed to turn a tabletop game into a successful movie that’s funny, spirited, and free of political cant. Even those who have never played D&D can follow along, and the movie is a fun-filled adventure.

Chris Pine plays a former heroic spy fallen from his noble calling who’s now part of a con-man troupe alongside Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian, Justice Smith’s bad sorcerer, and Hugh Grant’s carny. When Pine and Rodriguez land in prison, the group disbands. Later, when they reunite, they discover that Grant has risen to become the semi-dictator of a populous city and the caretaker of Pine’s daughter. He’s up to no good, and defeating him sets them on a series of wacky adventures.

The film resembles Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of its motley crew, but it’s most similar to the 1985 film Ladyhawke, a romantic medieval adventure that starred Matthew Broderick. Chris Pine channels some combination of Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart in his role, showing off his charming and witty side. He’s reminiscent of the other Chrises in modern cinema: Pratt, Hemsworth, and Evans.

Overall, the film is just fun-filled entertainment. A feeling that has been missed by many.