So bad your eyes will BLEED (Dungeons & Dragons (DVD))

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Dungeons & Dragons (DVD)
Date:	05/03/04 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tom Baker, Richard O' Brien, Death of annoying guy

Disadvantages: Script, Leads, everything else.

In his autobiography, Tom Baker reveals how, at the height of his fame in Doctor Who, he would be asked to go to visit dying children in hospital. 'It's the Doctor here' he would say to the child, the parents watching with mute hope that the appearance of their son or daughter's hero would bring about some sort of miracle. It never worked.

And now, twenty years later, a curly-haired but greying Baker sits at the bedside of a young man in an attempt to heal him. Except he now seems to be in Star Trek, as he's got Spock ears. He holds the hand of the young thief Ridley, and the whole audience takes on the parental role, hoping against hope that a miracle will happen and the Doctor will somehow breathe life into a wrecked body beyond repair. Of course he can't. He might heal Ridley, but 'Dungeons and Dragons' has by this point passed the event horizon of awfulness.

As Tom Baker tells the dreadful actors playing the leads about the perils of the dragon rod, we are left with a fleeting impression of what might have been. Clearly drunk, Baker shines with his normal fey eccentricities and brings a brief sense of otherworldliness to a film which, despite its fantastic setting, is mundane to the point of physical pain.

So what is Dungeons and Dragons actually about? Well, the plot is actually exceedingly clever. You see, this film presents us with a clear metaphor for the collapse of the Soviet block.

The Empire is a place where Mages subjugate the common people entirely. Justice is harsh, and the commoners have no rights at all. But then the Empress Thora Birch begins a process of reform and relaxation of the status quo, with the aim of bringing greater personal freedom to the masses.

This policy results in a coup by reactionary hard-liners, and Michail Gorbabirch finds her plans on the point of collapse. Luckily a hero appears just in time, Yeltsin-like, and defies the hard-liners. As a resul
t he has the opportunity to seize the reins of power himself, but chooses not to become a despot and eventually stands aside to let the people decide the future.

OK, I'm stretching the analogy. Basically, the 'plot' is a boring load of nob about a couple of sticks that can control unconvincing CGI dragons. Two thieves and a mage take it upon themselves to find one of these sticks to give to the Empress, so she can carry on her reforms. The film has clearly been butchered in the editing suite. The dwarf and the elf characters get barely five lines each, despite being apparently central. At one point, Ridley refers to the 'Wraiths in the scroll' having told him something, although we never see this. He also enters a dungeon in which nothing dangerous happens, beyond sliding down a tunnel. And then there's that ending. What's that about? It's too much to hope that all the characters just vapourise themselves at the end. Although the fact that my mate reckons the sequel is going to feature completely different characters is a hopeful sign...

The acting could have saved this film, with such an impressive cast. It doesn't. Tom Baker's blatant drunkeness steals most of the film, and Richard O' Brien's effortless cool snaps up the rest of the kudos. Jeremy Irons is clearly having an off day. His performance in this film is less convincing than his villainous turn in 'Lion King'. In the first scene, he looks like quite a regular guy - with a neat haircut and a cardigan. The next time we see him however, he's become a glam rock villain from hell with alarming eyeshadow, a funny quiff and a tendency to shout too much. Shame.

Thora Birch squanders a good chunk of the credibility she won with American Beauty in a role which is just utterly unremarkable. She is also the victim of some outfits that would make Princess Leia blush. Quite apart from the gold chainmail, there's the golden col
lar she wears in the council scenes. Apart from watching Tom Baker drunk, our biggest laugh in the whole film came from wondering whether she was going to defeat Jeremy Irons by pretending to bend over to tie her lace, and disembowelling him with her claw-tipped six-foot collar.

The lead, Ridley, is also a disaster, largely because he clearly thinks he's good. The occasional wry smirk betrays his clear ambition to be the next Harrison Ford. No way. The other thief... well, let's just say that there's a certain scene involving him where you'll be crying with relief.

No, I'm afraid this film is just poor. Indefensibly poor. I'd have to be paid quite a lot of money to see it again. The plot's just stupid, the acting performances are largely awful, and no one can be quite sure whether they should be playing it for laughs or not. While Irons slips in an excruciatingly clumsy reference to the 'Talented Mr. Ripley' for a laugh, this is in the same scene as characters start playing with big crackly swords in a way which is totally dissimilar to Star Wars. Oh yes it is.

Even character motivations are rubbish. At one point, the evil henchman (tm) has some sort of beastie stuck in his head to make sure he does his job. As he hasn't done anything particularly evil up to this point, we are presented with the fairly interesting idea that he's being coerced into his role. The film even comes close to achieving poignancy as he begs the mage for information so he can save himself. Then he just reverts to being an evil bounder with the dragon in his head becoming a mere irritation. Just one wasted opportunity among many.

No, the only people to come out of this sorry mess with dignity are Tom Baker and Richard O' Brien, who are only really cameos. The film is important in that we get a taste of what Baker might have been like as Gandalf (according to him, he was offered the role, but didn't fan
cy moving to New Zealand for 18 months) - ie, brilliant, and we see once again that fantasy is too silly to be played straight. If you want to see this kind of thing, stick with the Princess Bride. Or even the cartoon series 'Dungeons and Dragons' which I see is available for review.

Oh, and as a final note, as if the rest of the film wasn't bad enough, cinema cleaners cursed the sense of 'humour' which convinced the producers to stick a joke at the end of the closing credits. Normally people wouldn't bother waiting for a joke as lame as this, but we're talking about gaming geeks here, so they lap it up.

So, if you're one of those people that has to be in on every single in-joke in a film, one of the final captions reads:

'No dragons were harmed during the making of this motion picture.'

Hilarious, isn't it? I don't know which is more sad, the fact that the producers must have thought it was funny, or the fact that they thought their dragons were convincing enough to get away with the poor joke.

Dreadful.

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