First Take: Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Theives - no experience needed

SYNOPSIS: A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

It’s a game which has become even more popular than ever in recent years - beloved by Vin Diesel, Mayim Bialik (of Big Bang Theory fame) and many more, as well as the popularity of YouTube channels like Critical Role, D&D is no stranger to Hollywood adaptations, with its trilogy between 2000 and 2012. But this time it’s been made by people who know the legendary tabletop experience inside out, and it’s a surprisingly fun film even if you’ve never dabbled into the game which packed out the local board game cafe on a Thursday night back in the day. 

Jonathan Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (best known for writinf Spider-Man: Homecoming and directing Game Night) do an admirable job keeping this film to 2 hours 14 minutes, and while they’ve stated this isn’t a true franchise starter, it sure as hell feels like one with the amount of exposition going on. Goldstein and Daley are also DMs - sorry, writers - on the film, co-writing it with Michael Gilio (from a story by Gilio and Chris McKay) within the Forgotten Realms campaign fans know and love, and considering how complex the D&D system is in terms of roleplaying, they have translated the lore, the mythos and everything players love about the game into a fairly simple plot, if a little formulaic at points. But where they excel is the humour, something which a lot of these mythical adaptations have struggled in recent years. Barry Peterson absolutely kills it behind the camera, and whenever you see Lorne Balfe’s name attached to a score you know he can turn in a damn good score no matter what film it is.

Onto the core of where this film excels - the cast. Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis are our unlikely band of heroes, and if this film alone is enough to get a sequel made, these characters are ready made for future adventures- they’re super likeable, have a lot of backstory yet to be explored, and they seemed to have a lot of fun making this film. Rounding out the cast as our villains are Hugh Grant (who continues the renaissance he started with Paddington 2) and Daisy Head, with Rege-Jean Page popping up to give the film that final bit of lore-building for what could become a neat little franchise if eOne and Paramount (and especially game owners Wizards of the Coast) wanted to pursue it.

THE VERDICT

Honour Among Thieves is a fun enough film for what it needs to be, and while it hits all the traditional tropes of this genre and follows that traditional hero’s journey formula in a pretty basic way, it’s done with a lot of love and respect for the game which started it all off back in 1974.

RATING: 3.5/5