Guilty Parties Involved: Starring a bunch of nobodies and Jeremy Irons in possibly the most outlandishly over-the-top scene chewing villain role in history.

Fun-Crap Rating: 10 out of 10

2000 / 107 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Ben Heckendorn

Not-so-terrible part: The breastplate! (More on this later)

Really terrible part: Anytime Jeremy Irons mouth opens, Blue Lips, hell, pretty much everything.

Memorable line: Jeremy Irons, literally screaming “LET THEIR BLOOD RAIN FROM THE SKKKKKKKKKKYYYYYYYYYY!” with his hands curled into hooks and the eyes bugging out of his head.

I’m disappointed in Jones! (the guy who runs this site) We’ve been having these Shitty Movie Nights (SMN) for a few years now yet all this time he’s owned the DVD of “Dungeons & Dragons” and never suggested we watch it. Unthinkable! So we come to a certain SMN and it’s decided to watch some crap one of us already owns. It ends up being “Legend” and “Dungeons & Dragons”. (Jones has “Legend” cuz he’s a huge Tom Cruise fan. Hell, if Cruise showed up in a Mary Kate & Ashley videogame he’d probably buy that too!:)

Tom aside, “Legend” was just lame and boring but “Dungeons & Dragons” was a masterpiece of hilariously bad moviemaking! Sure they probably didn’t have a very big budget but who cares - they could have tried a little harder than they did. What am I saying? I’m glad they sucked balls at making this movie because it was more entertaining that 90% of the “good” films I’ve ever watched!

Right off the bat Jeremy Irons walks into the movie with a pose. God, words can’t describe it. Just imagine the lamest “damn, I’m in a shitty movie, I’m not even gonna TRY” villain walk an actor could do and that’s it. A dragon is then killed, its blood spills into a waterway in the middle of the room, the blood then catches on fire, spreads outside the castle and ignites a lake. If that sounds dumb in print imagine how stupid it looks on film!

This fire allows the movie’s “heroes” to sneak into the Wizard School and steal crap. They’re thieves you know, and are reminded of this when someone tells them later in the film: “That’s the problem with you thieves. always stealing things that don’t belong to you.” Seriously, this is written-on-bar-napkin-after-your-tenth-drink level dialog here, and it’s great! One of the heroes looks like a young Harrison Ford (I’ll call him Harry Jr henceforth) and the other one is a really badly racially stereotyped black character named “Snails” By this I mean 1930’s movie black stereotype, which is even worse. But you know, all stereotypes aside Snails is just a lame-ass annoying-as-hell character anyway so when he dies later on you’ll probably cheer and laugh when his buddy goes “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” in a way that puts Shatner’s “KHAN!” to shame.

In the wizard school the daring duo meets “Librarian chick” who comes off as a desperately poor man’s Rachel Weisz (aka Mummy Chick) She has some map that the bad guys want so she ends up tagging along with the doorknobs. The filmmakers obviously haven’t read “How Dowdy Chicks Become Hot 101″ or maybe they just skimmed the first few chapters because, see, this chick starts out correctly dowdy (glasses, vest, hair pinned up) but after only a few minutes she’s lost her glasses AND her hair comes down, complete with a few scenes of her running. (Think the end of “Tomb Raider”) C’mon people! This has to be done slowly to build tension! She can’t just throw all the goods out there like that, what will keep the audience watching?

Oh wait, the audience will keep watching to see what the hilariously bad villains will do next. See not only is there Irons (whose character’s name “Profion” sounds like one of those drugs you should “ask you doctor” about) but there’s Blue Lips as well. See Irons pulls the strings but it’s Blue Lips that actually chases down our heroes. Why call him Blue Lips? Well, to frighten his enemies he wears bright blue lipstick which, ya know, doesn’t really go with his red cape or black armor but I guess who gives a damn? He also talks and moves very slowly, which probably explains why the only character he manages to catch (and kill) is Snails.

Everybody in this movie is looking for a rod. (That’s their term, not mine. A “rod”) Not just any rod, but a magical one that can unite the kingdom or some such BS. “American Beauty”’s Thora Birch - playing a larger-breasted version of Queen Amidala (wears Geisha outfits, bitches at a Senate) - is also interested in getting the rod so she can save her people, or the whales, or. who cares? She’s wasted and tries to play it straight, making you actually feel sorry for her (until you remember she had to at one point said YES to this role).

So our heroes run around with the bad guys trying to stop them. Along the way they pick up a dwarf who tags along but only shows up in every other scene. The editor was probably like: “Hm, cutaway to reaction shot of hot chick or gross dwarf? Hot chick! Next scene? Hot chick! Oh wait, can’t forget the dwarf. There he is, now it’s back to the hot chick!” They also run across some tree people, a booby-trapped maze filled with eyeballs and an elf woman wearing The Breastplate.

The Breastplate was one of the damndest things I’ve ever seen (and yes, I’ve watched “Tank Girl”) Imagine if you had some of that Magic Shell stuff for ice cream that hardens but it was made of liquid metal. Ok? Now imagine that poured over a well-endowed female to form a breastplate armor. That’s what this thing looked like, complete with navel groove. I don’t know how this elf could bend over wearing the thing, but it certainly was attention grabbing! She also wore what looked to be khaki pants with it and matching liquid-metal leg guards.

The end of this movie is a “thrilling” sequence of flying dragons battling each other, with special effects so bad you think you’re watching a Playstation 2 game. Jeremy Irons screams, Blue Lips dies (I think) and Thora Birch does a voice-over saying “Our people are free!” To save time and money this is over a shot of a graveyard for a true “WTF?” factor, it then pans down to reveal they’ve buried Snails. His “grave” consists of 4 rocks piled on each other with the top one scratched with his name. But that’s not all! Some magical shit happens and apparently he’s not dead, so the remaining characters (Harry Jr, Librarian Chick and I think Breastplate woman) all magically swirl away into the air, obviously leaving it open for a sequel!

All in all “Dungeons and Dragons” is probably the most enjoyable bad movie I’ve ever watched. Unlike a lot of bad movies it’s not boring because stuff actually happens in it (something that keeps Ed Wood movies from being fun, for example) but everything that happens is of course stupid as hell. A true crap classic!

Suggested Number of Beers for watching film: 5

Drinking game: Take a drink every time:

1) The dwarf is suddenly missing from a scene(s) he should be in. Bonus: Take another drink when he finally re-appears!
2) You see a swooping fake CGI shot of a building’s exterior (Skip this one if you can’t hold your liquor - trust me)
3) When the camera cuts away to the librarian chick looking mad about something.
4) You see something involving eyeballs. (Apparently the director has an eyeball fetish - only explanation really)
5) You see The Breastplate!
6) Thora Birch shows up (Like the dwarf it’s quite sporadic)
7) Magic dust flies through the air and a “hole” in reality is formed and jumped through.
You hear the word “Rod”.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Ben's Picks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.