Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a long lost relic, in order to save the kingdom and to stop the return of an ancient evil.

Hollywood has been trying to capitalize on the Dungeons & Dragons brand for years, and it’s fair to say that they’ve consistently failed. Even worse, every one of the failures reinforced the regular world’s long-held belief that D&D is just a loser brand loved by losers (and also Satanists, of course, if you belong to our Nation’s dominant Cult, and are susceptible to its regular mass idiot-panics). This perception has lessened quite a bit over the past few years, mostly due to Nerds having taken over the majority of Pop Culture and then creating a bunch of movies and TV shows that feature D&D players, documentaries about LARPers, and most importantly, a seemingly endless font of Live Play Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) Podcasts, like Adventure Zone or Critical Role, for example, which have millions of subscribers. Still, despite these successes… the stink remains.

This film’s success might help to lessen that stink a bit.

Telling the story of a charming band of adventurers on a charming epic quest to retrieve a long lost relic—that is pretty agnostic on the whole charming thing—all in order to stop some not-so-charming bad guys, long story short… it’s a pretty charming film. Reveling in its classic bastard child of Tolkien epic fantasy setting, it’s a farcical little adventure, fun for all, that isn’t too bogged down by any specific nerd-minutiae.

Best of all, the film eschews a laughable and boring “grim and gritty” tone, and is instead often unpredictably silly. This really gives the whole thing a feel much like a gaming session with friends, where say… one too-full-of-Mountain-Dew-and-Doritos player with Murder Hobo tendencies, a random encounter with a particularly lippy bar patron, and a terribly lucky (or an unlucky, depending on your point of view) roll of the dice, can derail the whole campaign, causing the beleaguered Dungeon Master to sigh in resignation, throw up their hands, close their notebooks, and to make up the rest of the adventure on the fly.

All in all, it’s a lesser Guardians of the Galaxy for sure, with shades of Tolkien, Sam Raimi, and Peter Jackson, and it’s fair to say that it’s a little long, maybe, but if you’re enjoying it, I doubt you’ll notice. Otherwise, it’s light, fun, moderately clever, and as I said… charming, with a ton of Easter Eggs for the cool kids to spot, like the cameo by the D&D cartoon gang, and most especially as it’s all set in the Forgotten Realms end of D&D. Shout out to my fallen homies at Baldur’s Gate!

It’s worth checking out, if you’re in the mood for a bit of popcorn.