A light delight, even if you have no experience with the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves takes its fantasy world seriously, but not itself. This is no spoof, even if it is in the hands of comedians: the writing-directing team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, whose Game Night was one of the best comedies of 2018. Chris Pine stars as Edgin, an imprisoned adventurer when we first meet him, alongside his right-hand warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez). Edgin is the talky optimist, while Holga backs up his schemes with her muscle; the two actors make a surprisingly witty comic pair. The creature designs and special effects are all entertaining, if not groundbreaking, though the filmmakers do deserve bonus points for a sophisticated, unbroken action sequence in which a shape-shifter (Sophia Lillis) escapes a fortress by transforming into a series of animals. Like the film to which it is most indebted, The Princess Bride, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves also functions as a meta consideration of the art of storytelling. We learn about Edgin’s past via a yarn he spins for the prison’s parole board, while the rest of the film frequently pauses for all sorts of narrative diversions (including a hilarious sequence in which Edgin and Holga seek information from corpses on a battlefield and have to patiently endure their rambling tales of woe). With Hugh Grant as a duplicitous lord, Daisy Head as a creepy red wizard, Regé-Jean Page as an amusingly earnest knight, and Bradley Cooper in a cameo I won’t spoil here, except to say that it might be the film’s funniest moment.
(5/3/2023)
