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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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An infectiously good-spirited comedy with a solid emotional core, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves offers fun fantasy and adventure even if you don't know your HP from your OP.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves entertainingly blends action, fantasy, and comedy -- all while respecting the source material.

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Jonathan M. Goldstein

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The introductions to “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” at the SXSW Film Festival emphasized that they “made this movie for everyone .” There’s clearly a concern that the film may not reach outside the demographic of people who once played or still play the wildly influential role-playing game. And there should be because branding can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it targets a massive fan base already familiar with an IP. On the other hand, a film has to be good enough to break out of that familiarity to reach a wider audience—think of how well “The Last of Us” is playing to viewers who never played the game. So how will fans of Dungeons & Dragons respond to this expensive foray into their favorite fantasy experience? Paramount is rolling a 20-sided die and hoping to get the right number, but the fickle Dungeon Master of Hollywood may have a fatal surprise around the next corner.

The truth is that the game Dungeons & Dragons is often at its best when it’s at its most ridiculously unpredictable and downright silly. Co-writer/directors Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and co-writer Michael Gilio attempt to recreate that “we need a plan” structure of the game in a script that feels like it's often making itself up as it goes along. Or pretending to do so. While that’s an ambitious way to approach a fantasy film, it can make for oddly unsatisfying stretches of the final product by eliminating stakes and forcing lightheartedness. Manufactured spontaneity is almost impossible, and too much of “Honor Among Thieves” feels like it’s unfolding with a wink and a nod instead of being legitimately rough around the edges, in-the-moment, and fresh. There are stretches of “Honor Among Thieves” that have the whimsical chaos of Sam Raimi ’s “Army of Darkness”—including a great sequence involving the talking dead—and the film often recalls the “ragtag team of saviors” tone of “ Guardians of the Galaxy .” Still, the film often plays out like it’s faking what the creators love about the game instead of trying to translate it from one medium to another.

The typically charming Chris Pine plays Edgin Darvis, a former member of a group called the Harpers. After his wife is killed by an evil group known as the Red Wizards, Edgin tries to execute a heist to retrieve an item that can bring her back to life, but he’s betrayed, imprisoned with his BFF Holga Kilgore ( Michelle Rodriguez ), a stoic barbarian. In a clever sequence, the pair escapes and discover that Edgin’s daughter Kira ( Chloe Coleman ) has been taken in and lied to by their team’s former ally Forge Fitzwilliam ( Hugh Grant ). The rogue betrayed Edgin and the team in several ways, including partnering with a vicious Red Wizard named Sofina ( Daisy Head ).

Edgin and Holga have several missions in this D&D campaign: Save Kira, get revenge on Forge, stop the Red Wizards, and maybe find some loot along the way. The mission will reunite them with an unconfident wizard named Simon ( Justice Smith ), a shapeshifting druid named Doric ( Sophia Lillis ), and a charming paladin named Xenk ( Regé-Jean Page ). Like any “team of heroes” movie, these characters each bring different skill sets that the group will need to accomplish their goals, and the writers pepper the film with odd hurdles for the group to overcome, including a clever sequence involving some undead enemies and a chubby dragon in a dungeon.

If it all sounds like it’s more for fantasy gamers than “everyone,” well, it undeniably is. The film is filled with references to D&D—name drops like “Baldur’s Gate” and “Neverwinter” created audible responses during the premiere—but I wouldn’t go as far as to say the film won’t work at all for people who have never made a character for a campaign. Most of the references here will sound like depth for non-gamers who may see more parallels to products like “ The Lord of the Rings ” or “The Witcher” than their actual source. It’s a film that’s rich in fantasy terminology in a way that seems like its creators affectionately remember creating characters in their mom's basement when they were young. That genuine interest in the lore of D&D may be enough for some people. But what about everyone else?

Affection for a source doesn’t always translate to execution in terms of craft, and the filmmaking here is shoddy. In terms of the flashes and bangs, "Honor Among Thieves" works much better when it focuses on practical effects (or at least ones that look practical—everything is CGI nowadays) and can find a tactile quality that the CGI-heavy sequences lack. When Edgin and his team are waking up corpses to get information, or Sofina is merely scowling in her malevolent makeup, the film is more grounded than when it’s drifting off in magic-driven sequences of people casting spells both willy and nilly. There’s also a lack of world-building in a movie that should be dense with it when it comes to design. Forge’s city looks like a generic fantasy video game setting, and the opportunity to craft interesting backdrops for these varied characters is rarely taken. It looks like a film that's going to age poorly visually.

The cast is reasonably strong, with Pine leaning into the rough charisma I’ve always thought would have made him a massive star in the ‘60s. All of the cast was clearly chosen to play to their strengths, with Grant amplifying his smarm and Rodriguez kicking ass when needed. Relative newcomers Smith and Lillis are effective, too, with the former finding some vulnerability and the latter being consistently engaging as she uncertainly becomes a hero.

What’s most shocking about “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is how little meat there is on these reanimated bones, even with a bloated 139-minute runtime. When a cast of characters runs from plan A to plan B and back to plan A, the constant motion doesn’t allow for much else. Most of this film is “What we do now?” Again, that's fun with friends, less so when you have no control over the answer.

This review was filed from the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" opens on March 31.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie poster

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Rated NR for fantasy action/violence and some language.

134 minutes

Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis

Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore

Regé-Jean Page as Xenk Yendar

Justice Smith as Simon Aumar

Sophia Lillis as Doric

Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam

Jason Wong as Dralas

Chloe Coleman

Daisy Head as Sofina the Red Wizard

John Francis Daley
Jonathan M. Goldstein

Writer (story by)

Chris McKay
Michael Gilio
Jonathan Goldstein

Cinematographer

Barry Peterson
Dan Lebental
Lorne Balfe

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‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: They’re on a Roll

An ensemble cast aims to bring comedy and adventure to this film made in the image of the popular role-playing game.

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A woman in battle gear and a man in a dark jacket kneeling in a castle.

By Amy Nicholson

In the earliest decades of Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy-loving role players often hid their passion for the game. To the dominant culture, they were dweebs, then Satanists, then back to dweebs. Things changed after Jon Favreau kick-started the modern Marvel franchise in the summer of 2008 and, during the “Iron Man” promotional tour, publicly credited his years spinning tales about goblins and lizardfolk for teaching him to create “this modular, mythic environment where people can play in it.” Since then, D&D fans like James Gunn, Joss Whedon and the Russo Brothers have transformed the multiplex into their rec room where magical supersquads embark on perpetual campaigns. They are the dominant culture — and filmgoers who have never clutched a 20-sided icosahedron are subject to their throw of the dice.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” an amiable romp by the directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Gilio, comes clattering along just as the public has grown weary of caring about gewgaws with names like the monocle of Bagthalos. It’s late to its own party with good reason. The game hinges on cooperation and imagination — on the joy of friends inventing a creative way to trap an orc — and how in Hextor does that translate to sitting passively before a screen?

After a decade in development , the project that made it to the screen is a noisy, pixelated smash-and-zap that does manage to capture the spirit of play. The story starts with a silver-tongued bard named Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), a divorced barbarian named Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) and a simple challenge. Edgin and Holga must escape a fortified tower — a donjon in Old French, before the English redefined dungeon as someplace underground — to reunite with Edgin’s daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman). When they learn that Kira is under the thrall of a con man (Hugh Grant) who is himself under the thrall of a wizard (Daisy Head), our heroes’ gang expands to include an anti-establishment druid (Sophia Lillis) and a defeatist sorcerer (Justice Smith). Like the game, the team’s initial mission rapidly spirals into detours; the goal is less interesting than the brainstorming sessions that get them to the finish.

Having sat in on my share of D&D campaigns, my personal idea of purgatory is five people debating whether to open a door. Luckily, the film moves faster. Castles, volcanoes and yurts — oh my — whiz past at a clip that would make a dice-roller drool. Plans are quickly made and just as quickly fail. “This is what we do!” Edgin yelps. “We pivot!”

Can a C.G.I.-laden juggernaut evoke the freedom of improv? Not really — though there is a nifty one-shot chase sequence where Lillis’ druid hastily shape-shifts among a housefly, a mouse, a cat and a deer. Daley, a former child actor, once played the nerd on the TV show “Freaks and Geeks” who convinced James Franco’s character that D&D is cool because you can crack jokes and fight dragons. That remains the height of his ambition. There’s no momentum behind the father-daughter story line, so the closer the plot lurches toward all those hugs and tears, the more excuses the cinematographer Barry Peterson seizes to send the camera on a loop-de-loop. I’d rather cheer for a kooky blockbuster that’s all fiascos, like the midpoint Monty Python-esque sequence where the crew botches the resurrection and interrogation of craggy old corpses. Compared to that, the emotional climax is a bowl of cold groats.

The film, produced in part by Hasbro, makes no direct reference to the actual game outside the frame. Yet its mechanics are felt in ways both affectionate and sarcastic. During one brawl, the editor Dan Lebental cuts again and again to Edgin stuck on the sidelines struggling to abrade his rope cuffs. You can sense the character’s frustration to be rolling ones and twos. Later, when Regé-Jean Page strides into the action as a humorless, hyper-competent paladin, Goldstein and Daley permit our eyes to glaze over as he drones on about arcana that’s impossible to absorb. Instead, we snicker as Page solemnly cautions us against “ill-gotten booty.”

For a film about collaboration, the actors aren’t in tonal agreement about the movie they’re in. Grant’s commitment to his dastardly rogue barely goes beyond his cravat — he’d rather guffaw than feign gravitas. By the time a multiple Oscar nominee cameos in a scene played like a Noah Baumbach marital drama, you might wonder if these personality swings are the point? Now that fantasy adventures aren’t dweebs-only, there’s room at the table for all types.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Rated PG-13 for cartoonish violence and mild profanity. Running time: 2 hours 14 minutes. In theaters.

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‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: The Role-Playing Fantasy Game Becomes an Irresistible Mash-Up of Everything It Inspired

Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page rule in an adventure that turns pop-fantasy derivativeness into its own form of fun.

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Rege Jean Page plays Xenk, Michelle Rodriguez plays Holga, Chris Pine plays Edgin, Sophia Lillis plays Doric and Justice Smith plays Simon in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves from Paramount Pictures and eOne.

Introducing “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” the lavish hyperkinetic popcorn fairy tale that kicked off SXSW this evening, the film’s co-directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, told the audience that they had designed the movie to appeal to hardcore D&D players — and also to those who know absolutely nothing about the game. This came as a relief to me, since what I know about Dungeons & Dragons you could put on the head of a…well, I know so little that I can’t even come up with a proper D&D reference with which to spin that cliché.

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Kira, however, has come under the spell of Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant, chewing voraciously on every line), a scoundrel who rules over a walled city, and has convinced Kira that he can be a better dad to her than her own duplicitous father. Edgin wants to put his family back together, and if he can lay his hands on the Tablet of Reawakening, he’ll have the ability to bring his wife back to life and restore all that was lost. But the Tablet is locked up in a vault in the city, and he needs to find the Helmet of Disjunction — which can stop time — to do it. Are you with me?

“Honor Among Thieves” keeps introducing rules and gambits that interlock with pleasing logic but, as often as not, turn out to be MacGuffins. Yet they do their job — they seduce us, for a few scenes, into seeming as if they matter, at which point the film is only too happy to move on. Daley and Goldstein work with a precision that satisfies our inner megaplex classicist, yet it’s part of the film’s design that it never stops throwing things at us.

As Edgin forms a fellowship with such winningly offbeat characters as the insecure sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and the shape-shifting druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), “Honor Among Thieves” becomes a gallivanting magic-trick action movie with a dragon so pudgy the characters make a joke of it, an undead cult of Red Wizards who rule their minions with billows of crimson smoke like something out of “The Wizard of Oz,” and a scene of crowd-pleasing macabre cheekiness in which old grey skeletal corpses are raised from the dead so they can be asked five questions, at which point they collapse back into oblivion. The dialogue in a scene like this one has a precocious snap. The script is by Daley, Goldstein, and Michael Gilio, who invest each encounter — even if it’s with a corpse — with a charge of ego.

That said, there’s enough snark and visual zap on display that we may feel like we’re gorging on candy corn, and that we’re hungry for something a little more soulful. It arrives, in the person of Regé-Jean Page , who shows up as Xenk, who is noble in such an old-fashioned stoic corn-dog way (he can’t process irony, let alone a phrase like “son-of-a-bitch”) that he lends the movie the note of romantic valor we want. Page acts with a dark-liquid-eyed savoir faire that’s delectable, and for a while he and Pine become an ace comedy team: Xenk the man too suavely heroic to crack a joke, Edgin the one who makes a joke out of everything, including Xenk’s nobility.

There’s an intricacy to the staging of “Honor Among Thieves” that helps balance out the roller-coaster derivativeness of the plot. We go with it, even as we know we’re gorging on a succulent overdose of fantasy dessert. The gladiatorial battle inside a maze at the climax is sensationally well done, from the panther with Venus-flytrap tentacles to the treasure boxes along the way to the giant cubes of Jell-O that help save the day. The monster at the end? To me that was one demon too many. But no matter. “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” should be a major hit, because it knows how to tap into our nostalgia — not just for a game, but for the entire fantasy culture it helped to spawn. It’s the movie itself that’s role-playing.

Reviewed at SXSW (World Premiere), March 10, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 134 MIN.

Production: A Paramount Pictures release, in association with Entertainment One, of an Allspark Pictures, Hasbro Studios production. Producers: Jeremy Latcham, Brian Goldner, Nick Meyer. Executive producers: Denis L. Stewart, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chris Pine, Zev Foreman, Greg Mooradian.
Crew: Directors: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley. Screenplay: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gillio. Camera: Barry Peterson. Editor: Dan Lebental. Music: Lorne Balfe.
With: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Jason Wong.

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Movie Review

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is great — you just have to roll with it

Engaging, comical, and unapologetically dorky, honor among thieves occasionally stumbles under its own ambition but ultimately proves that high fantasy doesn’t always have to be highbrow..

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

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The cast of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at night holding flaming torches.

Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves makes two things clear within its first five minutes: it understands its audience and D&D experience isn’t necessary. You’d be forgiven for assuming this was going to be another lore-bloated fantasy epic, something that either fails to appease fans of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game or leans too far into it and confuses the “normies” — or is just plain awful like previous cinematic attempts. But while it’s not perfect, directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have managed to serve up a balanced adaptation that’s both effortless to watch while remaining faithful to its grandiloquent source material.

Honor Among Thieves takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a diverse fantasy world that also serves as the campaign setting for official D&D modules — which means a lot of locations throughout the movie will be familiar to those who’ve played the game. In the cell of a frost-entombed prison, we’re introduced to the charming and overconfident bard, Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), and Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), a brutish yet motherly barbarian and Edgin’s best friend. The pair sets out to rescue Edgin’s daughter, Kira, from Forge Fitzwilliam, a former accomplice-turned-conman who has instilled himself as the villainous Lord of Neverwinter. Forge is played by Hugh Grant, who leans into his usual “bumbling Englishman” persona for the role, while Daisy Head provides some more serious villainy as the Red Wizard Sofina.

A screenshot taken from Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie depicting the cast in the ruins of Dolblunde.

Edgin and Holga are later joined by a timorous half-elf sorcerer played by Justice Smith, a seriously jaded tiefling druid played by Sophia Lillis, and Regé-Jean Page, who leans all the way into our Bridgerton -fueled expectations as a beautiful, swaggering paladin. But where his Bridgerton character epitomized every romantic leading man, this guy is a walking parody of every epic fantasy hero to have graced the genre. Honor Among Thieves makes it very clear that it isn’t trying to be some byzantine fantasy epic. Beneath the layers of its magical, medieval-inspired setting, it’s just a relatively straightforward heist movie — assemble a lovable group of skilled individuals, break into a few vaults, and defeat the bad guys.

Thankfully, Honor Among Thieves also manages to be specifically D&D -flavored without being too dorky or cringey. It exhibits incredible self-awareness, navigating through recognizable tropes from the titular tabletop roleplaying game without being obtusely meta about the whole thing. In a real game, players are at the mercy of their dice: randomized numbers dictate if your action succeeds (casting spells, flirting with guards, etc.) or fails (falling into traps, offending guards with your terrible flirting). The film alludes to this through manufactured spontaneity — almost every interaction feels ad-libbed, as though spoken off the cuff following a dice roll. The performances of Pine and Grant are especially notable for injecting quick-witted humor into otherwise stale tropes. It feels refreshingly subversive.

A screenshot taken from Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie depicting the main cast and a gelatinous cube.

Appeasing nerds shouldn’t be a box-ticking exercise, but Honor Among Thieves should at least be commended for the sheer number of D&D Easter eggs crammed into its 134-minute runtime. There are multiple dungeons, multiple dragons, multiple treasure hoards, and multiple buff women accompanied by a generous smattering of references to what feels like at least half of the game’s entire spell list and bestiary. Fans of the franchise won’t be left wanting, and most inclusions are incredibly faithful to the D&D sourcebooks (not counting the whole “druids can’t wild shape into an owlbear” debacle).

The CGI used to depict canonical D&D regions like Icewind Dale and the Underdark is decent enough, as is its application throughout the film’s various displays of magic and spellwork. But practical effects are where Honor Among Thieves will win over the really hardcore fantasy nerds. The more bestial races from the D&D universe are portrayed using actual monster suits or puppets, as if plucked right out of something like The Dark Crystal . It all feels like an homage to sword and sorcery movies of the 1980s, and you feel it in all the ornately detailed costumes, prosthetic makeup, and actual animatronics. And unlike too many Marvel films, it still feels grounded in reality, so the CGI enhances more than it detracts.

Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis and Regé-Jean Page as Xenk Yendar in Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Honor Among Thieves has to appeal to both audiences: those who are familiar with D&D and those who aren’t. It clearly excels in the former, but while it does ultimately achieve the latter, it doesn’t completely avoid the pitfalls experienced by similarly ambitious lore-heavy IPs that attempted to break into cinema. (I’m looking at you, Warcraft .)

Honor Among Thieves ’ storyline progresses at breakneck speed, refusing to waste precious minutes of pacing to provide background on the various locations, items, or characters in order to accommodate the endless deluge of D&D references. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy managed to patiently walk its viewers through J.R.R. Tolkien’s expansive lore — Honor Among Thieves offers no such courtesy. Stereotypically fantasy-sounding phrases like “Faerun,” “Gracklstugh,” and “Emerald Enclave” often whiff by during on-screen conversations, rarely repeated or providing insight into their significance.

You don’t actually need background on any of the references peppered throughout Honor Among Thieves to enjoy the movie. It’s still very clear what’s unfolding on-screen regardless of the jargon. But its dedication to appeasing the game’s nerdy fan base doesn’t excuse the other cinema sins that tarnish it. The storyline is incredibly predictable for a franchise that prides itself on creativity, and most of the characters feel underdeveloped because the film attempts to cover too much with the time it has.

Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam in Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

This is especially true concerning its villains. Grant’s portrayal of Forge as “lord bad guy” is a lot of fun, but there are a lot of other villains in this — to the point that his character sometimes gets lost as increasingly sinister characters keep popping up to take up the mantle of the “real” Big Bad. There are simply too many malevolent cooks tampering with this fantasy-flavored soup.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is certainly let down by the scale of its own ambition in places, but I still had fun — more fun than I’ve had watching a fantasy movie in years, actually. It’s incredibly funny and overdelivers on the necessary ingredients to appease anyone who’s ever rolled a 20-sided die. You can even forgive the slightly chaotic pacing for accurately capturing how it feels to play through a real D&D campaign.

For those who don’t partake in the game, Honor Among Thieves is still perfectly enjoyable because it doesn’t take itself seriously. Yes, it’s flippantly humorous and self-aware, but it isn’t pretentious about it. If anything, Honor Among Thieves is unashamedly camp, vibing closer to the likes of Shrek and The Princess Bride than your typically hardcore action-adventure movie. It’s a reminder that the fantasy genre is still allowed to be goofy. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying stoic highbrow fantasy, of course, but watching Daley and Goldstein’s “Bardians of the Galaxy” ensemble bumble around with well-mannered zombies and obscenely pudgy dragons is a breath of fresh air.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hits theaters on March 31st.

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Michelle Rodriguez, Chloe Coleman, Chris Pine, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis in Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves review – riotously enjoyable fantasy adventure

More than just a reboot, this new chapter in the role-playing game franchise is a wonderful piece of world-building

W ell, this is refreshing. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is that vanishingly rare entity – a riotously entertaining family-friendly film that hasn’t been painfully squeezed out of a comic-book franchise like the last, forlorn dregs of toothpaste from a long-dead tube. Admittedly, this isn’t the first film to be based on the enduringly popular fantasy role-playing game – Jeremy Irons starred in a critically reviled version in 2000; a made-for-TV sequel and direct-to-DVD third instalment followed. But Honour Among Thieves is more than a reboot – it’s a fleshed-out, multidimensional piece of world-building, with immediately likable characters, plenty of face-crunching, axe-based fight choreography and a running joke about potatoes.

Kudos to John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who co-wrote and co-directed the picture. As a creative partnership, they have experience in reboots – they co-wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming – and board games, having co-directed the comedy thriller Game Night . With this picture, they strike a satisfying balance between character and action, and ensure that the digital effects are in service of the story, rather than the other way around.

It also helps that the film is exceptionally well cast. Chris Pine’s charm has never been more slippery as incorrigible thief Edgin and Michelle Rodriguez brings formidable action chops to Edgin’s partner in crime Holga. Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page bags the best lines and much of the action as Xenk. And then there’s Hugh Grant, whose roguish conman Forge bears more than a passing resemblance to his Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2 . But when the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?

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Rollicking 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' scores a critical hit

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L to R: Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith) and Edgin (Chris Pine) are hot to trot. Paramount Pictures and eOne hide caption

L to R: Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith) and Edgin (Chris Pine) are hot to trot.

Even if you don't know a halberd from a hezrou , you'll probably go into Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves thinking you know what to expect.

Because even if you've never experienced the beloved tabletop role-playing game on which the film is based yourself, you do know what a putative blockbuster franchise film looks and feels like in 2023.

You know, in particular, that it can be counted upon to adopt a specific, unvarying and very familiar tone, which by now we can all agree to call Marvel Funny.

Marvel Funny occurs along a spectrum adjacent to, but meaningfully separate from, Actually Funny because it's colder and more calculated. It is calibrated to wink at the audience conspicuously and unceasingly, to encase the spectacular and fantastic action of a given film — super powers, or space battles, or in the present example, spells and monsters — in a protective coating of ironic detachment.

This allows filmmakers to lean into the bombastic, over-the-top spectacle they spend so much money to deliver while ensuring audiences know that everyone involved with the film is in on the joke, that very soon some character or other will come along with a quip — an arch, sardonic, too-writerly quip — to prove that nobody's taking any of this stuff too seriously. It's a formula, a ritual, an attempt to dispel the grim specter of Cringe.

Rolling the dice on race in Dungeons & Dragons

(It's only reasonable to acknowledge that this cinematic formula is wearing thin. And that it's not entirely fair to call it Marvel Funny, as this approach has been coded into the genetic material of the blockbuster itself from the beginning; you can detect trace elements of it in Jaws , Superman: The Movie and Star Wars .)

So, you're in the theater. The lights go down, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves begins (if you're me, you at this point maybe think to yourself, "We come to this place ... for Magic Missile"), and sure enough, there it is, manifesting right there in the opening seconds of the very first scene: that same, predictable, inescapable approach. Marvel Funny. You were right.

But then, a few seconds later, you start to notice that the film's copious jokes — the quips, yes, but also the visual gags and the dialogue itself — are better, stronger, and funnier than they strictly need to be.

And then, should you allow yourself a moment of reflection, it likely occurs to you how weirdly right it seems, how well that familiar approach seems uniquely attuned to the film's subject. After all, any Dungeons & Dragons session unfolds on two levels simultaneously. There is the world of the game, in which your characters experience epic struggles and extreme violence and suffering unto (and sometimes beyond) death, while above it, there is the world of the table, around which you and your friends sit scarfing hard sourdough pretzels and joking about how badly you're all about to get boned.

So here, Marvel Funny works . It makes a kind of ironclad, ruthlessly meta sense. It helps tremendously that the cast is so deft at tossing off the film's many jokes so they seem like the legitimate product of their given situation instead of some mid-afternoon punch-up session in a dingy Burbank writers' room.

L to R: Doric (Sophia Lillis), Simon (Justice Smith), Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) roll for initiative. Paramount Pictures and eOne hide caption

L to R: Doric (Sophia Lillis), Simon (Justice Smith), Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) roll for initiative.

A game cast fit for a role-playing game movie

The adventuring party at the center of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is led by Chris Pine as Edgin, a bard far too convinced of his talents. It's the kind of role Pine was engineered in some secret subterranean Hollywood breeding facility to play: a character who not only rides the razor's edge between charm and smarm but who sets up housekeeping there.

And speaking of smarm: Hugh Grant, as a rakish rogue, is once again serving us the kind of full-bore, insufferably plummy poshness he gifted the world within Paddington 2 . He's reached the stage of his career where he can spread the ol' smarmalade thick and more power to him. He sure looks like he's having a ball.

As the sullen barbarian Holga, Michelle Rodriguez doesn't get the chance to do a lot that you haven't seen Michelle Rodriguez do before, but she remains great at it, and this time out, she does it in braids. So. There's that.

It's Been a Minute

The game has changed for d&d and 'a league of their own'.

But it's Regé-Jean Page who makes the most of his (too-limited) screen time here. As the noble paladin Xenk, he radiates an amusingly galling breed of virtuousness. (Paladins, for those unfamiliar, are the smug, preening, condescending white knights of the D&D world — a bunch of Frasier Cranes in plate mail.) Page nails the necessary hauteur and supreme confidence while layering them with a guileless sincerity that turns his character into a weapon aimed at Pine's character's every insecurity.

But what will the Normals think?

If the film does well, a large percentage of its audience, perhaps a majority of it, will have come to it unfamiliar with the densely interconnected network of rules, stats and bylaws that make the game what it is. So an important question becomes — what will those uninitiated into the nerdy number-crunching of D&D possibly make of this thing?

The filmmakers — Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who together directed the excellent 2018 film Game Night and co-wrote this script with Michael Gilio — smartly use the game's deep lore to buoy the script, not weigh it down.

'Game Night' Is Winning

If you go into the film knowing the internecine mechanics of D&D gameplay, you will certainly recognize them playing out onscreen — but you miss nothing if you don't.

Worried you'll be bombarded with obscure references to places and characters from the game? You will. But just because the film's so stuffed with Easter eggs you could mash it up with mayo, mustard, onions and celery and serve it on wheat toast, your enjoyment of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn't depend on recognizing them.

Sure, the characters can and do toss out references to, say, a Baldur's Gate here or a Mordenkainen there, but they're only in the script so the nerds in the audience can turn to one another and share knowing looks. If, in their adventures our doughty heroes run into a displacer beast or two, or if a rust monster scuttles over their heads in a dark alley, those Easter eggs for eager D&D fans will serve only as background detail, mere ambience, for everyone else.

With 'The Legend of Vox Machina,' a Dungeons & Dragons web series rolls the dice

The fetch-quests and the furious.

The film's plot is purely, ruthlessly episodic – it comes down to a series of fetch quests: They must go to [place] to talk to [person], who sends them to [other place] to secure the [magical item] that will allow them to access to [still another place], etc. But to complain about the number of fetch quests in a D&D film would be like complaining that a movie about Scrabble features too much spelling.

Given how gleefully Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieve s embraces and exults in its genre elements, it's interesting to note that it's all the stuff geared to making the film accessible to the mainstream that is the most dully generic thing about it.

A plotline involving Edgin's daughter (Chloe Coleman) and his dead wife exists to up the stakes and motivate his actions in the thuddingly predictable manner of Hollywood action movies. There's also so much wet-eyed, lip-quivering dialogue about "family" you can't help but suspect that Michelle Rodriguez brought it with her when she crossed over from the Fast and Furious franchise. Who knows; maybe she didn't quarantine correctly.

But the movie even manages to shake off that mild complaint, given its nature. After all, the game of Dungeons & Dragons is what happens when wildly disparate people come together — both in the fantastical realm of Faerun and around a rickety folding table in your friend Dana's sunken living room.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn't just know that; it finds room to honor it and fully, freely embody it.

Correction March 31, 2023

An earlier version of this review misspelled Faerun as Fearun.

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Dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves, common sense media reviewers.

Cast elevates funny game-based adventure; action violence.

Dungeons & Dragons Movie Poster: The characters stand in a circle, looking down/out of the frame

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie, like game that inspired it, values teamwork

The team might be thieves, but they're brave and l

The ensemble of characters is racially diverse, wi

Lots of fantasy action violence, with many perilou

In flashbacks, a married couple court, embrace, an

Occasional but not frequent use of words including

Inspired by a game/product line. Also lots of offl

A few scenes of the team in taverns where adults d

Positive Messages

Movie, like game that inspired it, values teamwork, perseverance, courage. The plot demonstrates that even thieves can act according to a code of honor and be loyal, as well as act toward a greater good. One character's story arc conveys that it's important to have confidence in yourself in order to achieve desired results. One subtle message, thanks to Edgin and Holga, is that men and women can be close platonic friends.

Positive Role Models

The team might be thieves, but they're brave and loyal. They're flawed, but each has reasons to work together. Edgin and Holga both love Kira and want to keep her safe. Doric wants to protect the tribe that took her in. Simon wants to prove he's capable of something greater than he imagines.

Diverse Representations

The ensemble of characters is racially diverse, with people from different backgrounds, species, and/or communities. The actors who play them are similarly diverse: Chris Pine and Sophia Lillis are White, Michelle Rodriguez is Dominican, Justice Smith is multiracial, and Regé-Jean Page is half-Zimbabwean, half-White. The women on the team are confident and physically powerful, and discuss more than romance with each other. The villain is a woman.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Lots of fantasy action violence, with many perilous life-or-death moments that lead to destruction and death (including one major character). Several brawls, battles, and one-on-one fights using knives, swords, fists, crossbows, and magic. A woman is such a strong warrior that she routinely takes on multiple people at a time. A red wizard uses magic to cause lots of damage to people and places; she kills people with a magical spell that ends them nearly instantly. Poisoning. A character has flashbacks to how his wife was poisoned by a wizard's blade. A beloved character is seriously injured.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

In flashbacks, a married couple court, embrace, and kiss. In two scenes, they're shown in bed together, talking and cuddling. The youngest team members flirt with each other and by the end are clearly interested.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional but not frequent use of words including "s--t," "stupid," "bastards," "son of a bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Inspired by a game/product line. Also lots of offline merchandise and tie-ins.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A few scenes of the team in taverns where adults drink. One character makes references to another character's drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is an action-packed comedy/fantasy adventure based on the classic role-playing game. The story follows a team of misfit bandits led by Edgin the Bard ( Chris Pine ) and his warrior best friend, Holga ( Michelle Rodriguez ), who must work together to stop an evil wizard. Expect lots of fantasy action violence, including sword, crossbow, and fistfighting; poisoning; and magical battles that instantly injure or even kill. Lots of life-or-death moments lead to death and destruction, as well as one major character death. Occasional strong language includes "s--t," "bastard," and "son of a bitch." Romance is limited to flirting and flashbacks that show a married couple affectionate, kissing briefly, and lying in bed cuddling. The story features a diverse cast and powerful women characters. Although they're thieves, (most of) the characters are loyal to one another and help more than just themselves. Hugh Grant , Justice Smith , and Regé-Jean Page co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (23)
Kids say (29)

Based on 23 parent reviews

What's the Story?

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES introduces viewers to imprisoned best friends Edgin ( Chris Pine ), a disgraced harper, and Holga ( Michelle Rodriguez ), a disgraced barbarian, who are pleading their case for early release to a judicial board. Edgin explains that they were caught after being double-crossed by a villainous wizard, Sofina ( Daisy Head ), during a heist that they only agreed to do in order to raise Edgin's late wife from the dead. After escaping from prison, the friends try to reunite with Edgin's tween daughter, Kira ( Chloe Coleman ). But they discover that their former partner-in-crime, Forge ( Hugh Grant ), now lord of Neverwinter, has been acting as Kira's adoptive father and has kept all of the old gang's stolen riches, including the much-needed resurrection amulet. After surviving an assassination attempt, Edgin and Holga put together a team of misfits -- including their old half-elf friend Simon ( Justice Smith ), shapeshifter druid Doric ( Sophia Lillis ), and ageless paladin Xenk ( Regé-Jean Page ) -- to steal back the relic and stop Forge and Sofina.

Is It Any Good?

This entertaining, star-studded comic adventure takes full advantage of its "ragtag misfits on a mission" theme. Writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley far exceed expectations -- which, admittedly, are pretty low for game-based genre movies. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ' story manages to be engaging, funny, and occasionally moving, but also lighthearted and not overly violent. And it's significant that the main male and female characters are platonic best friends who aren't romantically interested in each other. The writers give Edgin and Holga a sibling-like bond: They tease and taunt each other but also unconditionally support and love each other, leaving the (refreshingly light!) romantic tension to their younger pals Simon and Doric. Pine is a pitch-perfect lead, and Rodriguez has played so many versions of a woman warrior that you just expect her to fell lots of foes. The supporting characters are equally well cast. Grant is hilarious as the greedy Forge; Page (of Bridgerton fame) is clearly adept at playing humorless, seemingly perfect characters; and Head does a fine job pivoting from her beautiful Shadow and Bone character to play a villainous wizard who's trying to take over the world.

Goldstein and Daley's script is full of zingers and ongoing jokes, but it's also earnest and sweet, reminding viewers that these are indeed deep-feeling characters with kind hearts. In one scene, Holga visits her ex-husband, whom she still loves. He's played by an A-list actor in a small but impactful cameo (no spoilers here!), and their conversation is surprisingly substantive for a relationship talk in an action movie. Speaking of which, the action sequences are slick without being overwhelming, with brawls making up most of the fights until the third act. There's a funny moment when Holga faces off with six or seven opponents on her own, and Edgin is so confident in her chances that he's on a completely different mission. The scenes between Edgin, Holga, and young Kira also pack a punch, as the thieves must reconcile their motives with what the girl actually needs from them. And the world-building, while not as thorough as Lord of the Rings , is enough to make audiences eager for a sequel to this fun, funny family movie pick.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Is it realistic, or stylized? How does the type of violence affect its impact?

Do you consider any of the characters role models ? Are some of them worthier of respect and admiration than others? Why, or why not?

How does the storyline demonstrate themes of courage , perseverance , and teamwork ?

If you're a fan of the D&D games, how does this movie live up to your imagination of what it might be like to see D&D characters come to life?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 31, 2023
On DVD or streaming : May 2, 2023
Cast : Chris Pine , Michelle Rodriguez , Regé-Jean Page , Hugh Grant
Directors : John Francis Daley , Jonathan Goldstein
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors
Studio : Paramount
Genre : Fantasy
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 134 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : fantasy action/violence and some language
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : September 2, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

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‘Dungeons & Dragons’ movie scores, thanks to perfect tone, spot-on casting

Chris pine, michelle rodriguez have terrific buddy-movie chemistry in fantasy film that deftly balances high-stakes action, warm drama and clever comedy..

Film_Review___Dungeons___Dragons__Honor_Among_Thieves.jpg

A young wizard (Justice Smith, center) joins a band of rebels headed by Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) and Edgin (Chris Pine) in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”

Paramount Pictures

Full disclosure, I was never a Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast back in the day, as my tabletop gaming pursuits were more along the lines of Sure Shot Hockey, Cadaco’s BAS-KET and Strat-O-Matic Baseball—but I know the basics of D&D, and I appreciate its enormous popularity, which has extended far beyond the gaming world.

Still, when you’re making an ambitious, large-budget adaptation, in order for it to succeed, you’ve got to reach millions who aren’t familiar with the source material, whether you’re interpreting a board game, a video game, a book or a popular song, and yes, they’ve made movies from pop songs, haven’t you ever seen “Take This Job and Shove It” or “Born in East L.A.?” Think of all the people who became addicted to “Game of Thrones” without reading a page of George R.R. Martin’s books, or who were enthralled by “The Last of Us” without ever playing the game.

Which brings us to the good news: Even if you’re never once rolled the dice in the role-playing game, there’s a solid chance you’ll enjoy the whiz-bang fantasy adventure that is “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.” Co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, working from a script they penned with Michael Gilio, have struck the right balance between high-stakes action, warm drama and clever comedy in a consistently engaging, mostly family-friendly romp that features some of the most spot-on casting of any film so far this year. From the moment each of the main characters steps into the story, we’re thinking: Yep, that’s the right actor for that role.

Chris Pine, who has the megawatt smile and the stubbornly perfect hair of a matinee idol from a bygone era, lends his self-deprecating presence to the role of one Edgin Darvis, a member of the Harpers, an organization of spies and thieves who have a kind of rebellious, Robin Hood group mentality. Edgin’s penchant for unnecessary risk-taking leads to an evil and powerful cabal known as the Red Wizards executing his wife, and eventually lands Edgin and his best friend, the fearless warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), in prison. (The cheeky overall tone of “Dungeons” is quickly established when Edgin and Holga execute a daring escape during a hearing before the prison board; they’re just out of earshot when a parole board member calls out that they’ve actually been approved for release.)

Off we go on our adventure in some sort of medieval-fantasy era, with the impressive sets and the inevitable CGI setting the tone. (There are a lot of weird creatures with jarring appearances roaming and flitting around.) Edgin and Holga learn their former ally, the duplicitous Forge Fitzwilliam (cue Hugh Grant to start hamming it up) has risen to power and has also become the de facto father to Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman). Why, that rat Forge Fitzwilliam! Now it’s time for Edgin to make a plan, because after all, Dungeons & Dragons is all about making plans to save the day, and adjusting those plans accordingly along the way, yes?

Edgin and Holga form a team that includes the gifted but insecure young wizard Simon (Justice Smith); the shapeshifting druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), who for the most part doesn’t trust humans, and the impossibly handsome, ridiculously heroic paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), who is almost too good to be true but has zero sense of humor, doesn’t understand irony and will bore you to tears with his grand proclamations about how one should live one’s life. They each have different goals, but the elaborate and sometimes dizzying plot boils down to this ragtag but determined band somehow defeating the nefarious Forge Fitzwilliam—and his infinitely more dangerous partner in death and destruction, the Red Wizard known as Sofina (Daisy Head), a pure psychopath with seemingly unlimited powers.

Film_Review___Dungeons___Dragons__Honor_Among_Thieves_1_.jpg

Regé-Jean Page (right, with Jason Wong) plays a paladin with no sense of humor.

Many of the battle sequences in “Honor Among Thieves” are serviceable at best, but there’s usually a nifty twist, e.g., there’s a voracious dragon who is so oversized and heavy he could be on a show called “My 6,000-lb. Dragon Life.” The humor is also crackling good, as evidenced by a hilarious sequence set in a graveyard involving reanimated corpses that can answer exactly five questions before they’re dead again. It’s a scene worthy of a Monty Python movie, pulled off with great panache.

Still, the most valuable asset in this film is the cast. Pine and Rodriguez have terrific buddy-movie chemistry, while the young actors Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis are excellent in their respective roles and have their own vibe, including the possibility of romance between Simon and Doric. In a relatively limited role, Regé-Jean Page effortlessly steals every scene he’s in, while Daisy Head is legit terrifying as Sofina and Hugh Grant does his Hugh Grant thing as the ludicrous and terrible Forge Fitzwilliam. This isn’t the first time someone has attempted an adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s by far the best.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

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'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Review: A Chaotic Fantasy Adventure That Rolls a Hit

'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' is slated for a theatrical release on March 31.

For years, the concept of adapting the vast and immersive canon of Dungeons & Dragons into a successful feature film seemed insurmountable — but there's no denying that the tabletop role-playing game has been given a new resurgence lately, thanks to various campaigns being played out on streaming. Even celebrities like Joe Manganiello are proud to boast their status as D&D players, and successful web series such as Critical Role have been given the animated treatment, so if there were ever a time for Hollywood to try rolling the dice again on a new D&D movie, it would be now. Enter Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves , which hails from directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley ( Game Night ), who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Michael Gilio (from a story he crafted with Chris McKay ). The duo brings their existing, goofy comedic sensibilities to an expansive fantasy world, a crowd-pleasing combination that respectfully nods at diehard fans while remaining just accessible enough for any newbies.

It wouldn't be a D&D campaign without a cast of well-defined but somewhat misfit characters, and at the head of the group is Chris Pine 's hapless bard Edgin Darvis, whose backstory gets spooled out for us rather quickly and in a quite memorable fashion. He's come a long way from his former gig as a sworn member of the organization known as the Harpers; in fact, he and his much more reticent partner, barbarian Holga Kilgore (a terrifically dry Michelle Rodriguez ), are currently doing time in a wintery prison on charges of "thievery and skullduggery." The two career criminals have been Robin Hooding their way through various heists ever since the death of Edgin's wife at the hands of a Red Wizard, all with the aim of supporting Edgin's young daughter Kira ( Chloe Coleman ), so being caught on their last heist wasn't really ever the plan. Orchestrating an escape from prison so that Edgin can track down Kira — who's been living under the guidance of fellow ne'er-do-well, Forge (a quite shifty Hugh Grant ) — is only the beginning of this adventure that soon comes to involve paladins, halflings, a diabolical necromancer, a delightful owlbear, and more surprises too good to spoil.

It's inaccurate to label Honor Among Thieves a bonafide star vehicle, not when each actor takes the strengths through which they've made their careers and wields them to the best of their ability here. Pine exudes every ounce of charisma that first earned him the role of Captain James T. Kirk and a name in the pantheon of Hollywood Chrises, but Edgin is a much more luckless character than anyone we've seen him play before, which leads to some of the film's funniest beats. Similarly, Rodriguez gets to lean full-tilt into her capacity for action while making Holga a blunter instrument for comedy in her repartee on-screen with Pine. Justice Smith becomes their third, more unwitting partner-in-crime as Simon Aumar, a young sorcerer who doesn't always have the greatest confidence in his abilities. Rounding out the group is Doric ( Sophia Lillis ), a tiefling druid and resistance fighter with wisdom beyond her young years, who has her own personal reasons for getting involved with this motley crew.

RELATED: Final 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Trailer Ramps Up the Action and Excitement

And then there's Regé-Jean Page , who was clearly only showing us the start of what he could do when he rode into the Regency world of Bridgerton three years ago. As paladin Xenk Yendar, a warrior of legend with good looks to match, Page enters into a clear charm-off battle opposite Pine where the real winners are all of us who get to watch them on-screen together. Next to the rest of our less-than-noble characters, Xenk is the straightforward, cut-to-the-chase, noble type, saving infants and protecting the important magical relic that the group needs in order to continue their quest. He may not understand sarcasm or modern colloquialisms, but he successfully manages to utter such phrases as "ill-gotten booty" with a completely straight face. By the end of our all-too-brief time with Xenk — who's clearly intended to serve the very important role as guiding NPC — he's not only won over the biggest skeptic in Edgin, but also nearly walked away with the entire film solely on the power of Page's inherent magnetism.

The biggest appeal of Honor Among Thieves , then, lies in its characters and the journey they undergo together, rather than their target destination — which is also the biggest draw about D&D in the first place. In spite of the arguably perilous situations this group finds itself in, there's also a lot of room left for laughs, and the film's writers know how to utilize jokes that not only ease the tension but keep the story from descending too hard into darker places. In the hands of another script or a different franchise entirely, Edgin's story would be a tragic one, suffused with man-pain about the loss of his wife and his failures as a father, but Honor Among Thieves isn't written to make his narrative the sole priority. Each character's motivations and issues are given equal weight. Holga's history isn't only wrapped up in being a surrogate mother to Kira; she's also dealing with the aftermath of her failed marriage to a halfling, which resulted in her being exiled from her own people. Simon has struggled all his life to measure up to his ancestors, powerful sorcerers in their own right, but his magic often fails more than it succeeds. Doric, who was abandoned by her birth parents, has sworn herself to the Emerald Enclave and now dedicates herself to resisting everyone who would threaten her new family. Ultimately, all of their individual stories come together in surprising ways, especially since these characters wind up fighting against a shared enemy in the formidable wizard Sofina ( Daisy Head ), who serves as acolyte to a shadow-lurking baddie.

Honor Among Thieves wouldn't work half as well as it does without a natural affection for D&D itself, and that element shines through in nearly every scene. Goldstein, Daley, and Gilio have recognized that successfully adapting this franchise doesn't mean flinging every possible Easter egg or piece of fanservice at the wall to see what sticks. Instead, there's a thoughtful, playful deployment of each and every cameo that pops up within this movie's campaign, with jokes inserted more in the capacity of loving winks than mocking finger-pointing. It all ramps up to the film's final boss battle that sees our heroes drawing on every single skill they can in order to gain the upper hand and save the world from imminent destruction, a strategy that undoubtedly calls back to the greatest aspects of the game. (In fact, don't be surprised if you leave the theater with a growing curiosity about how to start a campaign of your own.) Whether you're an uninformed novice or an established fan, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves serves up enough unabashed silliness, memorable characters, and epic storytelling to invite anyone into its entertaining realm.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves had its world premiere at SXSW 2023 on March 10 and is slated for theatrical release on March 31.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

March 31, 2023 by Robert Kojder

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves , 2023.

Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant, Jason Wong, Chloe Coleman, Spencer Wilding, Will Irvine, Nicholas Blane, Bryan Larkin, Sarah Amankwah, Colin Carnegie, Georgia Landers, Sophia Nell Huntley, Clayton Grover, Ian Hanmore, Paul Bazely, Kenneth Collard, Hayley-Marie Axe, and Daisy Head.

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.

When Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (co-writing alongside Michael Gilio with a story from Chris McKay) opt to educate D&D newbies on the world, characters, mystical creatures, and lore through showing (such as adorable brutal owl-bear hybrid), the adventure is inviting and fun. There’s joy in discovering what has made D&D stand the test of time as arguably the most popular role-playing board game in existence, even if many of its ideas are not only familiar but have been retooled for other properties (there is a nifty walking stick that can shoot a pair of teleportation portals reminiscent of the videogame Portal ).

Then there is another set of jokes and references that feel specifically designed for fan service without much explanation, occasionally closing off how far one can get invested in the narrative. It also comes across as forced pandering, which would be forgivable if it didn’t happen so often and wasn’t so obvious. By the end of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves , one doesn’t come away with much more knowledge or a deeper appreciation for the board game’s fantasy universe, partially because the narrative is so insistent on functioning as a cliche story about the family people make throughout their lives. Unfortunately, those characters here don’t have any depth beyond their game class or where they come from.

The upside is that the script has mostly found the right tone, aside from a few scenes taking themselves a bit too seriously (the ending lands emotionally because it involves a tough choice that says something about who these characters are and what matters now). Anytime someone monologues about past mistakes, relationship woes, or an ongoing war that means nothing, considering there is hardly any context to it, it’s a blessing that the moment is inevitably broken up by someone making a joke and putting things back to a more fitting, cheesy mood.

Opening up with a heap of exposition introducing Edgin (Chris Pine), a former Harper (a network of spies that also means nothing since the flashback glosses over that portion of his life and the movie never really engages with them as a faction) that left the group after they got his wife killed, forcing him to raise his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) on his own. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is also the kind of movie that gives Kira a magical object granting her invisibility, just because. Anyway, Edgin befriended warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez, admittedly delivering a bruising physical performance throughout some competently crafted fight sequences), eventually expanding their rings by enlisting amateur wizard Simon (Justice Smith) and con man Forage (Hugh Grant) to pull off bigger, more rewarding heists.

You can probably guess which one of those characters betrays the group and is in full-on eccentric villain mode, becoming a king while everyone else is locked up and turning young Kira against her father while raising her with such strong manipulation that even when he returns, she is distrusting. The plot is so basic and uninvolving that none of this really matters; it’s all an excuse to send these characters on quests searching for legendary items that will help them defeat a Red Wizard (Daisy Head), put an end to the king’s tyranny, and obtain yet another magical artifact, one that is capable of reviving Edgin’s dead wife. Along the way, they meet a shapeshifter with a grudge against humans (Sophia Lillis) and a paladin who doesn’t understand jokes or sarcasm (Regé-Jean Page).

Admittedly, the production design is outstanding, especially when the film occurs in real environments and locations. Everything from the buildings to the loot to the fantastical objects simply looks expensive and colorful. When the story strays away from that and into green screen territory (some daytime CGI is also rough around the edges), it is less convincing and heightens the overall genericness of everything happening. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are also comfortable leaning into comedy, which adds some much-needed personality; a sequence involving briefly resurrecting and questioning the dead is especially hilarious. If anything, the film is funnier than it is exciting or enchanting.

Fans will probably have a blast and perhaps find something to appreciate in the story (maybe it’s intentionally corny and familiar to represent the kind of role-playing scenario players better might come up with one night). It’s also fair to say that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is indeed temporarily endearing but loses steam (the pacing needs to be tightened up in the second half), and by its conclusion (save for a relatively moving ending), it is for diehards only.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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DVD & Streaming

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Action/Adventure , Comedy , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 31, 2023
Chris Pine as Edgin; Michelle Rodriguez as Holga; Justice Smith as Simon; Sophia Lillis as Doric; Regé-Jean Page as Xenk; Hugh Grant as Forge; Chloe Coleman as Kira; Daisy Head as Sofina; Spencer Wilding as Gorg; Will Irvine as Tobias; Georgia Landers as Zia; Nicholas Blane as Chancellor Anderton; Bryan Larkin as Chancellor Norixius; Sarah Amankwah as Baroness Torbo; Clayton Grover as Chancellor Jarnathan; Ian Hanmore as Szass Tam

Home Release Date

May 16, 2023
John Francis Daley; Jonathan Goldstein

Distributor

Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

Charismatic bard Edgin’s plans don’t always work. And that’s why he and his barbarian friend, Holga, are rotting away in a prison in the frigid Icewind Dale.

They, along with a con man named Forge, were hired by a mysterious woman, Sofina, to steal an item from a heavily guarded vault of goodies. There was a personal stake it in for Edgin, too: One of the many goodies was a Tablet of Reawakening, which has the ability to revive his long-deceased wife.

But they didn’t plan on the vault being booby trapped. So while Forge and Sofina got away with both Sofina and Edgin’s bounties, Edgin and Holga were captured. It’s been a couple years since that heist, and Edgin longs, more than anything, to get back to his daughter, Kira.

That’s why Edgin made another plan that arguably goes better than the last one, resulting in his and Holga’s escape from their confinement. But when they meet up with Forge, whom Edgin entrusted to look after both Kira and the Tablet, things are a bit different.

While they were locked up, Forge weaseled his way into becoming lord of the grand city Neverwinter, storing the Tablet behind a magically protected vault. He’s also quite enjoyed getting to shape Kira into a smaller version of himself, so he’s not keen on giving her back to Edgin, either. Backed up both by his power as lord and Sofina’s deadly spells, there’s not much Edgin can do about any of it.

Which is why cooks up yet another plan: They’ll need to pull off one final heist, one that’ll break both Kira and the Tablet out of Forge’s greedy clutches. For that, they’ll need a team—a team of people who don’t mind Egin’s admittedly shaky track record when it comes to planning and heists gone awry.

Positive Elements

When Edgin reunites with Kira after his years in prison, she’s not too excited to see him. And we quickly learn that Forge has been lying about Edgin to her. However, even apart from those lies, Edgin does shoulder some of the blame. He never told Kira about the heist (as he didn’t want to get her hopes up of seeing her mother again if the Tablet ended up being false). But when Edgin returns, he blames his absence on outside circumstances.

Kira isn’t having it. “You’re acting like it wasn’t your fault,” she says. Edgin takes that criticism to heart, eventually culminating in a genuine, heartfelt apology about how he hasn’t been a good father to her and desires to change that.

Kira is excited to see Holga, however. Holga took pity on Edgin when she found him trying to raise then-baby Kira by himself. She’s become a surrogate mother of sorts to the girl, and her friendship with Edgin is unwavering. In fact, after Holga is told by a former love interest to find herself a family, she comes to realize that she already has.

When the party of thieves wants to give up on their quest to save Kira, Edgin tells the group that they can’t give up just because they fail. He says that he’s aware of how often his plans don’t work, but he keeps trying anyway, because he only truly fails if he stops trying.

The party Edgin and Kira build is full of thieves looking to score a hit against Forge. But when a real evil emerges, they band together to stop it from hurting innocent lives.

Spiritual Elements

We see many magical moments throughout Honor Among Thieves . Simon, a sorcerer, joins the party. He casts many spells to help Edgin and Holga fight off bad guys. He also uses an incantation that allows him to raise a dead corpse in order to ask it five questions. Simon also attempts to “attune” to a magical helmet, essentially to bond with it so that he can use it.

Another person who joins the group is a druid girl named Doric. As a druid, Doric has the ability to “wildshape,” or transform, into many different creatures. Doric is also a Tiefling, a race of people cursed with an infernal bloodline after their ancestors made a pact with the demon Asmodeus. (And although Tieflings sport horns, they merely look the part and don’t necessarily act it.)

Another team member, Xenk, is a paladin, a holy warrior that strives to only do good. He imbues his sword with “positive energy” to help him slay some enemies.

Meanwhile, a man from the wicked cult of the Red Wizards uses a spell called beckoning death to turn his victims into an undead army. The spell is said to enslave their souls to his will. When someone is attacked by a Red Wizard, a magical mark is placed on them.

A vault is protected by an “arcane seal.” A hallowed location is called “sacred ground.” Xenk tells Edgin that bringing his deceased wife back from the dead “is to deprive her” of her new life. A man says that some magic chooses who is able to wield it. The Tablet of Reawakening is allegedly able to bring someone back to life. Forge tells Edgin that shaping a child into your own image is like “being a god.”

Sexual Content

Holga wears cleavage-baring outfits at times. Edgin shares a kiss with his wife. An orc makes some suggestive remarks about Holga. A man bathes, though nothing is shown.

Violent Content

The combat in Honor Among Thieves can be intense, but it isn’t bloody—even when characters are killed in ways that would likely spill a lot of blood. The combat violence we see here is reminiscent of that in The Lord of the Rings movies in their fierce, yet mostly bloodless battles.

A “beckoning death” spell turns many victims into undead soldiers, shambling and zombie-like corpses that froth at the mouth.

Other people are killed in swordfights and by magic spells. A guard’s head is decapitated inside his helmet. One attacker’s throat is slit (off-camera). Debris crushes some people. Guards get hit in the helmet with a cobblestone. People are tossed around by gravity spells and hit with fireballs or electricity. Holga breaks an orc’s legs. A body is burned at a funeral. A man is poked in his eyes by someone’s fingers. Someone punches through a skeleton’s chest. A tabaxi child (a cat-like race) is pulled from the mouth of a big fish.

The land is full of dangerous creatures, too. A dragon eats a man, and the beast is stabbed in the head. A displacer beast (a panther-like creature) maims many. A gelatinous cube dissolves a man who is trapped inside it (we only see the skeletal end result). A mimic (a creature that pretends to be objects in order to catch and eat people) attacks Holga, and its long, sticky tongue is cut off. People are grabbed by tentacles. An owlbear (pretty much exactly what it sounds like) throws guards around and smashes an enemy into the ground multiple times.

The party talks with a few undead corpses who died in a ferocious battle. We see the battle take place, and its combatants get slashed with swords and attacked by a dragon. One corpse tells of how he died by being hit through the eye with an arrow, and we see his decayed eye hanging from its socket as he speaks. Another corpse was cut in half. A third corpse tells of how he slipped when stepping out of the tub, and we see the man hit his head and die.

Crude or Profane Language

The s-word is used five times. We also hear six uses of “d–n” and four instances of “b–tard.” “B–ch” and “pr-ck” are used twice. We also hear single instances each of “h—,” “bollocks” and “bloody.” God’s name is abused once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Edgin is intoxicated and is escorted home by Holga. A man implies that Holga “drinks herself silly.”

Other Negative Elements

People dig up dead bodies. Edgin describes a bucket in his cell as the “bucket where our pee freezes.” Edgin steals jewelry and horses, and his daughter helps him in a couple heists. Forge lies to Kira.

Let’s talk about the Loxodon in the room.

It’s no secret that Christians and Dungeons & Dragons have historically not gotten along. The D&D (as fans call it) at the start of this film’s title, paired with a lot of magic along the way, may be enough to convince you to not see it. (More on those concerns in a moment.)

But just as a D&D campaign has its many battles, it also has its heroic moments, too. Interwoven within this heist story is a father who is desperately attempting to save and reconnect with his daughter. Like most adventuring parties, it’s about a group of broken people who come together to find that, together, they can have a family.

And, like many a D&D group, Honor Among Thieves refuses to take itself seriously, instead coming across more akin to a medieval format of Guardians of the Galaxy . It’s a sillier version of The Lord of the Rings —which makes sense. After all, the creators of D&D took much inspiration from Tolkien’s world.

But also similar to Tolkien’s work, the spells and violence can put a damper on things. Just as Aragorn summons the army of the dead to save the day, Simon the sorcerer asks an undead corpse for wisdom. And you’re right to assume that there’s much more spellcasting, sword fighting and, yes, dragon chomping. Throughout its runtime, Honor Among Thieves puts its adventuring party through various perilous situations that result in plenty of baddies, killed in bloodless fashion.

Honor Among Thieves certainly won’t be a critical hit among the Christian community. But I’d also suggest that its positive messages do keep it from rolling a natural 1.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves Review

31 Mar 2023

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

The last attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons adaptation was a disaster to make you wish they’d lock the dragons in the dungeon and throw away the key. But this new effort comes courtesy of Game Night ’s John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein , and establishes them as the go-to team for any attempt to make a board-game related movie. If this is not quite as consistently hilarious as their last effort, it’s still just as much fun as a weekend D&D session and doesn’t require any complicated dice. Minute one establishes that we’re in a fantasy land, as a heavily armoured cart delivers a monstrous prisoner to an Orthanc-looking tower. Any sense of foreboding, however, doesn’t last long. This is a fantasy made by people who have seen Shrek , so that each time you’re presented with a looming fortress, hand-drawn map or tragic backstory, someone will undermine the moment with a quip, or Lorne Balfe’s score will deliver a witty Lord Of The Rings parody to poke fun at whatever is happening.

That knowingness is necessary because, almost by definition, a Dungeons & Dragons film must look like a pretty generic fantasy world. Call it John Carter syndrome, but when you’ve influenced almost everything that follows, it’s difficult to stand out. There have to be taverns, caverns, robed baddies and leather-clad heroes: all the tropes. Daley and Goldstein still pepper in visual innovation, filling the world with bird people, halflings that manage not to look like hobbits and the odd person who happens to have a cat head. Even their dragons — and the film does technically deliver multiple dragons and dungeons — are a wry take on the familiar terrors. But it was never going to be the visuals that distinguished this one: its success all comes down to the plot, the characters and the gags.

It turns out that there is a serious core to this story after all, one that serves as a really lovely tribute to the game.

That’s because, beneath the fantasy trappings, this is a heist movie, a group quest in the best traditions of the game. Ex-cons Edgin ( Chris Pine ) and Holga ( Michelle Rodriguez ), a bard and a barbarian respectively, set out to steal a treasure for commendably sympathetic reasons. They must find a way past smarmy con man Forge ( Hugh Grant , living his Phoenix Buchanan best life) and evil sorceress Sophina (Daisy Head, genuinely unnerving).

Against these formidable foes, Edgin and Holga recruit Justice Smith ’s insecure sorceror Simon, who’s charmingly hapless, and Sophia Lillis ’ idealistic shapeshifter Doric. The pair are a pleasant contrast to the breezily confident Edgin, Pine dialling the charisma to maximum and the effort to near-zero. Pine in blockbuster mode might be the most consistently fun of the Chrises — here mixing Captain Kirk’s insouciance with Steve Trevor’s mission focus. He’s paired beautifully with his glowering, platonic life-partner Holga, Rodriguez playing much the same character she does in the Fast films: all stoicism and physical strength, but really shining here as a comedy foil as well as a bone-crunching physical force.

This Ocean’s quartet becomes a quasi-family, and the film gives them room for eccentric and bickering growth. On the plot-front, however, it does get occasionally bogged down in side quests while our heroes seek the Noun Of Whatsit to break into the Fortified Location Of Wherever. But just as it all threatens to get lost in the fantasy weeds, Regé-Jean Page turns up with a scene-stealing turn as an outrageously perfect paladin. His tragic hero has no sense of humour whatsoever, and, like a more chiselled Drax, that utter lack of irony serves to make everyone else seem ten times funnier. He also gets some cool bits with a sword, before his shining morality prods Edgin to (reluctantly) become a very fractionally better man.

From there, everything proceeds exactly as it should. There are no big surprises in the last act, but there’s some of the film’s best comedy, and a bit where Chris Pine goes a-wassailing with a lute. The action climax packs in references to favourite bits of game play and even some visual nods to its players. And then they hit you with an emotional whammy. It turns out that there is a serious core to this story after all, one that serves as a really lovely tribute to the game. Our heroes — all outsiders, rejects and self-perceived failures — ultimately gain strength, acceptance and friendship in the found family that they build together. As the adaptation of a game that helped generations of socially awkward teens to find their tribes and their confidence, that’s a beautiful note to hit.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ on Prime Video, Where You Don’t Need to be a Dweeb to Enjoy This Relentlessly Funny Fantasy Lark

Where to stream:, dungeons & dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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From the Somewhat Gently Taking the Piss Dept. comes Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (streaming for Prime Video subscribers starting on Friday, August 24, 2023), a goofball fantasy lark based on the wildly popular 1980s role-playing game that helped fuel a goodly portion of the Satanic Panic. Those of us who found the frenzy laughable back then have something new to laugh at, since this film DARES to take the poker-faced swords-and-sorcery genre and sully it with comedy and a less stifling tone and narrative approach. That, courtesy of a star-studded cast led by Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez, and directors/co-writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, whose 2018 outing Game Night made us not only laugh our fool heads off, but raise an eyebrow at their considerable visual versatility. The filmmakers applied their spirited dynamic to D&D: HAT , turning out one of the more surprisingly enjoyable genre outings in recent memory – so enjoyable, you may yearn for a movie-watching future with less Incredible Hulk and more umber hulks.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Edgin (Pine) is a Harper, whatever that is. There’s a running joke in the movie about his only skill being “making plans,” but he also can play the lute, the former being more helpful for his adventures in thievery with his crew of warriors and sorcerers and shapeshifters, and the latter being good for the occasional joke. Anyway, I looked it up, and within D&D lore, Harpers are noble types, notable in the context of Edgin’s character because he no longer is particularly noble. Maybe you deduced that when I used the words “adventures in thievery” a couple sentences ago. He changed his ways after evil wizards killed his wife, leaving him to single-dad his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman); he eventually befriended the barbarian asskicker Holga (Rodriguez), and the two of them wholly platonically raise Kira while leading a small group of likeminded rogues on not-so-morally-upstanding endeavors.

It was during one of those endeavors that Edgin obtained the Tablet of Reawakening, which he wanted to use to bring his wife and Kira’s mom back from the dead. But one adventure in thievery went to shit, landing Edgin and Holga in a miserable prison citadel in the middle of a wintry Siberia-esque hellscape. But they escape to Neverwinter, where they learn that former colleagues Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) and creepy-ass wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) now rule the place, and are also evil, having taken Kira in and convinced her that her dad’s a crumb. Forge has Edgin and Holga tied up and just as they’re about to be beheaded Holga breaks her bonds and breaks some heads while Edgin takes forever just to figure out a way to escape his rope bondage. That’s the thing – he’s the brains, sort of, and she’s the brawn, although she also has some brains, and Edgin’s therefore frequently justifying his usefulness around here: “I make plans!” he frequently reminds everyone.

Right, “everyone”: They include a couple of pals in Simon (Justice Smith), an elf-eared sorcerer whose insecurities render his powers less powerful, and Doric ( It breakout star Sophia Lillis), a goat-horned druid who can shapeshift into animals, e.g., a snake, a mouse, a deer, an owlbear. They’re committed to helping Edgin and Holga reclaim Kira and her loyalty, and acquire the Tablet of Reawakening, and maybe snatch all of the riches the weaselly Forge keeps beneath his castle. Easier said than done – it’s not like they can just bum-rush Forge, because he has many faceless knights at his disposal, and Sofia is very powerful and apparently has tapped into some freaky occult shit. And so our heroes-who-are-almost-antiheroes must journey to and fro across the land, meeting allies like Xenk ( Bridgerton ’s Rege-Jean Page) – notably a pompous guy who’s very serious like he’s been dropped in from a very serious fantasy movie, which makes him very funny within this not very serious fantasy movie – and chasing down this thing that will help them acquire another thing, and then using the power of the another thing to get yet another thing, and so on. You know how this type of stuff works. It’s always convoluted, these quests, so very convoluted.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: D&D: HAT exists in the space between the serious fantasy of Lord of the Rings and a spoofy misfire like Your Highness – think the tricky space in-between, where The Princess Bride and Galaxy Quest found a way to be simultaneously funny and fantastical. It also vastly improves upon previous D&D outings, of which there are three, beginning with the forgettable 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie (starring Jeremy Irons, of all people), which inspired a trilogy rounded out with two direct-to-video junkheaps that I didn’t realize existed.

Performance Worth Watching: The film’s effectiveness hinges on the chemistry of Pine (who’s witty without engaging in snark) and Rodriguez (whose furrowed-brow tone and expression are a shade away from winking camp). They have a strong script to work with, and come off effortlessly funny.

Memorable Dialogue: The movie is full of snappy little exchanges like this, when Edgin and Holga arrive at a somber graveyard for warriors who died in battle, hoping to exhume and revive corpses to get information on one the whereabouts of one the film’s many MacGuffins:

Holga: I always imagined I’d be buried in sacred ground like this. Edgin: Anyone got a shovel?

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: As D&D: HAT indulges the use of a Pendant of Invisibility and other implements consisting of one word followed by an “of” followed by another word, I get out my Pen of Critical Inquiry to praise the movie’s abundant entertainment value. There are no delusions of grandeur here, no political allegories, no attempts to enlighten us to the frailties of the human condition. Nope, it’s popcorn japery in fine form: Swords against sorcery, sorcery against monsters, monsters against swords, and around and around, while the charismatic cast slam-bangs the consistently amusing setup/one-liner dialogue and the filmmakers employ clever visual techniques to keep the laughter on track while the characters are too busy fighting and scampering to be talking. Sure, some of the lengthy pseudo-tracking shots are the product of digital trickery, but somebody had to conceptualize and compose them, understanding that, if executed correctly, they’d capture and enhance the sense of rollicking fun that is the movie’s goal. ( Game Night benefitted from similarly creative flourishes.)

The aforementioned fodder is plenty to keep crossover audiences entertained. Plenty . To appreciate it, one needn’t have spent hours and hours in a dim-lit pit pouring Mountain Dew over your Smurfberry Crunch with a half-dozen fellow dweebs, tossing 20-sided dice during endless D&D campaigns – but it doesn’t hurt. The action and multi-tiered-quest structure mirror the game play nicely, or so I’ve read; I wouldn’t know for sure. And of course the film is full of inside jokes and sly references waiting to be gobbled up by experienced Dungeon Masters everywhere (it’s set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, if that means anything to you), but you’ll appreciate the inherent comedy of a hungry gelatinous cube regardless of whether you’ve “fought” one before as a paladin-on-paper bearing a bastard sword and a concerningly dwindling number of hit points. The source material is just an opportunity for more jokes, and more jokes is always OK. A movie like this can’t have enough jokes. Think of all the movies you’ve endured that didn’t have nearly enough jokes! They’re terrible, while this one is very clearly not.

We could gripe about some aspects of the film – its tendency toward CGI overkill for sure, an overreliance on flashbacks, maybe, or not giving Hugh Grant quite enough opportunities to be a cheeky smarmy shithead, perhaps. But then I think of all the jokes, like the one in which the Xenk character is so heroic he’s a humorless buzzkill who wouldn’t recognize irony if it was a shambling mound wrapping a vine around his neck and squeezing. Or the one about the walking-brain creatures who only attack intelligent beings, and therefore don’t attack any of the principal characters. The film also doles out smidgens of earnest emotion like pudding cups at a slumber party, lest it cease to have any dramatic weight whatsoever. Not that we’d ever take any of this seriously; Lord of the Rings really shouldn’t be taken seriously, but at least D&D: HAT gives us plenty of excuses not to. Plenty.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is silly, but only as silly as it needs to be.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Leaked Dead by Daylight Killer Seems Even More Likely Now

A recent tease from Behaviour Interactive seems to lend credibility to previous leaks about a future Dead by Daylight Killer.

Behaviour's tease confirmed a Dungeons & Dragons crossover with Dead by Daylight, potentially hinting at Vecna as a new Killer.
The leak predicting Vecna also suggested Castlevania's Dracula could be next.
If Dracula does join the game, it's possible it will be part of a larger Castlevania crossover.

A recent tease by Behaviour Interactive has lent credibility to a previous Dead by Daylight leak that claimed Castlevania 's version of Dracula is a future Killer. Dead by Daylight has managed to stay successful for so long thanks to regular content updates that add new content to the asymmetrical multiplayer horror game. While all Dead by Daylight content updates are appreciated, the ones that generate the most buzz are those that add new Killers to the game.

New Dead by Daylight Killers are exciting because they add iconic horror movie characters to the game and give players new skills to master. Behaviour recently started teasing a crossover Killer that will be pulled from the world of Dungeons & Dragons , and it's that tease that has potentially clued fans in on a Killer that's supposedly coming to the game even further down the road.

Dead by Daylight Releases Update 7.7.1

It's long been rumored that Dungeons & Dragons ' Vecna will be joining the Dead by Daylight roster of Killers. The new teaser has confirmed that the Dungeons & Dragons crossover is happening, with more information coming on May 14, but it stopped short of revealing Vecna . However, the fact that a D&D crossover is happening at all lends credibility to an old leak that claimed Castlevania 's Dracula is coming to Dead by Daylight . The same leak accurately predicted Chucky and Alan Wake, and now it seems to have accurately predicted Vecna.

Dead by Daylight Leaker Claims Castlevania's Dracula is on the Way

Assuming Dead by Daylight does add Vecna to the game as the leak suggested, it seems highly likely that Dracula from Castlevania will be next up to bat. The leak has accurately predicted multiple Killers in a row, so it's safe to say that the leaker, Gumpy887, has legitimate insider information somehow. What makes this all even easier to believe is Konami's willingness to license its franchises and characters to others.

Konami isn't shy about licensing its IP , allowing its popular franchises to pop up in other games. That being said, the character Dracula is technically in the public domain, so one might wonder why Behaviour would cut a deal with Konami just to get the company's version of the famous vampire. Like with other Dead by Daylight crossovers, it seems likely that Dracula would just be the tip of the iceberg. One has to imagine that the crossover will likely extend to cosmetics and perhaps even a new map and new Survivor, making the Castlevania crossover more worth it for Behaviour, though all that's been leaked so far is Dracula.

Dead by Daylight

Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game in which one player takes on the role of a Killer and the others play as "Survivors." The Killer must hunt the Survivors, while the Survivors must escape.

10 Highest Rated Blockbusters of 2023 (And How to Watch Them)

These blockbusters take the cake when it comes to critical appraisal.

2023 has been a mixed year for blockbuster films. Barbie and Oppenheimer owned the summer, while The Super Mario Bros. Movie lovingly brought the most famous video game character back into the cinematic medium, but there were also disappointments. Everything Disney touched seemed to turn to dust, with record-poor outings for the MCU, Indiana Jones, and Disney Animation, while the DCEU completed its slow death with the cataclysmic failure of The Flash.

But 2023 has still delivered a set of blockbusters worth watching. While not a perfect metric, Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer offers an easy way to take the temperature of a movie's overall quality. The metric measures how many from a large selection of critics and online personalities gave a film a favorable review; it does not measure the average of how much they liked it, like other aggregate sites. While more artistic fairs can divide the Tomatometer, blockbusters are meant to be crowdpleasers that as many people as possible at least like.

10 Wonka Is Charming

Tomatometer: 83%.

With dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.

In theaters now

Number ten is the most recent release on this list, Wonka. A prequel to Roald Dahl's classic children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Wonka tells the origin story of chocolatier Willy Wonka long before he was sending out golden tickets. Timothée Chalamet plays the titular role, which Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder have previously played, while Paul King, of the Paddington films, directs.

Wonka has been praised as an old-fashioned singing and dancing musical appropriate for the whole family. Chalamet offers a surprising and energetic performance, making the role his own. While no replacement for the 1970s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory , Wonka is set to be a delightful and sweet Christmas treat.

9 Creed III Kept The Story Going

Tomatometer 88%, wonka's 10 biggest easter eggs for the previous movies.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

The ninth film in the Rocky universe and the third since the franchise was relaunched by Ryan Coogler and Michael Jordan in 2015, Creed III continues the journey of Adonis Creed and his family. Jordan returned for the titular role, and the film also marked his directorial debut.

The film sees Creed come out of retirement to face his childhood friend and former boxing prodigy, Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) after the latter spent most of his life locked up. Jordan's direction brought an anime flair to boxing scenes, something completely fresh in the long-running franchise.

8 Barbie Was A Surprise Blockbuster

Tomatometer: 88%.

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.

Streaming on Max this Friday

The biggest movie of the year, in terms of box office, 2023 will be remembered as the summer of Barbie . Starring Margot Robbie as the titular Barbie and Ryan Gosling as her loyal and mostly useless partner, Ken, it seems ludicrous to call Barbie a surprise hit, but just 12 months ago, the film was a complete enigma.

Many doubted if director and co-writer Greta Gerwig could turn a movie about a doll into something worth watching, but worth it, it was. The film follows Barbie and Ken as they travel from Barbie Land to the real world to try and solve the mystery of Barbie's flat feet. Funny, charming, and delightful, Barbie proved there are stories worth telling from outside of the traditional blockbuster stereotypes.

7 Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Was Able To Do The Impossible

Tomatometer: 91%, dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves.

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.

Just crossing our blockbuster threshold of $90 million at the North American domestic Box Office but still largely ignored by audiences, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fun fantasy adventure that's definitely worth a watch. Chris Pine plays a bard who leads a multi-class team of thieves as they try to retrieve a lost relic.

Based on the tabletop game and set in a vast fantasy world, Dungeons & Dragons' most distinguishing quality is how much fun it is. The film fully captures and embraces the oddities and comradery that arise when a group of friends take on a D&D campaign.

6 M3gan Introduced Viewers To A New Horror Icon

Tomatometer: 93%.

A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.

Amazon Prime Video

Debuting back in the first week of January, M3gan propelled itself with a viral marketing campaign and ended up as a surprisingly robust Blumhouse horror film. The film is a modern twist on the haunted doll horror trope, but instead of a children's toy being possessed, it's corrupted by a rouge AI.

After robotics engineer Gemma (Allison Williams) has her lifelike doll project shut down, she decides to test it on her recently orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Inevitably, things go wrong, and violence ensues. While M3gan doesn't offer anything new, it's a fun and robust ride for horror fans that maximizes its concept.

5 Oppenheimer Is Another Christopher Nolan Masterpiece

Oppenheimer.

The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

Die Hard and 9 Other Niche Christmas Movies to Watch This Holiday Season

Available to buy on all online platforms as well as Blu-ray and DVD

In any other recent year, Oppenheimer, the three-hour historical biopic, wouldn't even qualify for this list, but 2023 has been no ordinary year, and Christopher Nolan is no ordinary filmmaker. Oppenheimer , which chronicles the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, is one of the year's densest and most intricate films. Outside of the Trinity Test, the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb, the film is a lot of people sitting around conference tables and discussing politics. The story is told with Nolan's trademark non-linearity and asks for a lot of attention from its audience to follow it.

Oppenheimer's commercial and critical success show that audiences were craving something different this year. They wanted to see something more challenging and serious than an average blockbuster in a film that pushed its cast to do some of their best work.

4 John Wick: Chapter 4 Was Another Quality Entry In The Series

Tomatometer: 94%, john wick: chapter 4.

John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.

Streaming on Starz

The fourth, and possibly final, entry in the franchise turns everything up to 11 and pulls off what might be its best installment. Keanu Reeves once again stars as the assassin who was enjoying his retirement until someone killed his dog. In this installment, John continues to work his way up the hierarchy of the not-so-secret world of assassins to finally face a decisive duel with the head of the High Table.

Despite its epic run time, John Wick: Chapter 4 mostly limits itself to three locations. Each section of the film takes John to a completely different part of the world, slowly building up the tension before erupting in a long, ever-escalating, and balletic action scene. Each section is more intense than the last, coming together to create one of the best pure action films Hollywood has ever produced.

3 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Is Superhero Animation Taken To The Nth Degree

Tomatometer: 95%, spider-man: across the spider-verse.

Miles Morales catapults across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles must redefine what it means to be a hero.

10 Greatest Sequel Movies Of The Last Five Years

Streaming on Netflix

The sequel to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse picks up right where its predecessor left off, pushing a bold, fresh take on 3D amination and pairing it with a meaningful story that uses the multiverse for more than just easter eggs. Across the Spider-Verse sees Miles (Shameik Moore) meet up again with a different universe's Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld), who's now been recruited by the multiverse-hopping Spider-Socioty. Miles follows her through the multiverse and ends up in conflict with the society's leader.

One of the best-looking 3D animated films the medium has ever produced, Across the Spider-Verse is a dense and tightly scripted film that seamlessly blends its characters, themes, visuals, and storylines into a package that's even better than the first film. The only mark against it is its cliffhanger ending, designed to lead into the trilogy's final part. Initially slated for summer 2024, Beyond the Spider-Verse currently has no release date.

2 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Gave Viewers The Thrill They Wanted

Tomatometer: 96%, mission: impossible - dead reckoning part one.

Available to buy or rent on all online platforms as well as Blu-ray and DVD

The seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise can be best described as the one where Tom Cruse rides a motorcycle off a cliff. Christopher McQuarrie returned again to direct his third Mission: Impossible in a row. Dead Reckoning Part One sees Ethan Hunt and his team tracking down the mysterious Entity, a rough AI system that has the power to cause a complete global catastrophe.

With an AI as the antagonist, the team's digital technology becomes unreliable, giving the perfect excuse for Dead Reckoning to focus on the physical, practical filmmaking that the franchise has always counted on. Although Dead Reckoning is a step back from its predecessors, a little over-bloated in parts, and with a plot that goes all over the place, it's the action set-peaces that really define these films, all of which are stellar.

1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Is Top-Tier Turtles

Tomatometer: 96%\, teenage mutant ninja turtles: mutant mayhem.

The film follows the Turtle brothers as they work to earn the love of New York City while facing down an army of mutants.

Streaming on Paramount+

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was the most universally enjoyed blockbuster of 2023. This may come as a surprise to some, given the animated feature's soft opening in early August, but this modern take on the classic underground heroes has resonated with almost everyone who saw it. Mutant Mayhem is a reboot for the heroes-in-half-shells, breathing fresh life into the characters and setting them up for future adventures.

The film sees the Turtles venture to the surface and encounter a very different incarnation of April O'Neil. From there, they try to investigate a series of robberies that lead them to face off against an entire army of mutants. Mutant Mayhem's striking use of a fresh design looks like it owes a debut to Spider-Verse , while great pains are being made to characterize the turtles as modern teenagers, using the same technology and making the same references.

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‘barbie’ struts to no. 2 in deadline’s 2023 most valuable blockbuster tournament, small movies, big profits: sydney sweeney and glen powell’s rom-com, horror hits among overachievers in deadline’s 2023 most valuable blockbuster tournament.

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Editorial Director/Box Office Editor

‘Anyone But You’: How The Sexy Romcom Became A $200M+ Global Box Office Phenom

Small Movies, Big Profits: An Oscar Winner And Horror Hits Among Overachievers In Deadline’s 2022 Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament

Anyone But You Sony/Columbia Pictures Net Profit: $103M

Sony development executive Maia Eyre brought this Will Gluck-Ilana Wolpert project into the studio. Mix in the genius, sizzling-hot pairing of Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney and Top Gun: Maverick ‘s Glen Powell and you get a long holiday honeymoon for Sony in this romantic comedy revival. Although streaming has vacuumed up the genre, Sony believed that date movies still exist. Anyone But You opened under the radar over the four-day Christmas weekend to $8 million and yielded over a 10x multiple at the domestic box office with $88M-plus, and $219M worldwide. Sony pulled a page out of its Spider-Man: No Way Home playbook and had Sweeney and Powell do their interviews and social media stunts together, highlighting their chemistry and bantering. Sweeney’s social reach at the time of the pic’s opening was near 17M. Marketing costs were low on this at $65M global given the big push on digital and social, particularly TikTok, where the following pieces took off: the duo’s lip sync of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” (a near 28M views) and “The Dirtiest Pick-Up Lines” bit (near 25M). Pic’s pay-one is through Sony’s rich Netflix deal.

THE BOX SCORE

Insidious: The Red Door Sony/Blumhouse/Stage 6 Films Net Profit: $92M

The Nun II New Line/Atomic Monster Net Profit: $85M

This is evidence of how the power of a brand works at the box office through thick and thin. While several movies shifted out of the fall and late August due to the actors strike with performers unable to promote, New Line kept the sequel to its highest-grossing Conjuring movie, The Nun ($366M), on the calendar. People went, with the sequel about a demon-deflecting nun opening to $32.6M in the post-Labor Day Warner Bros frame for hot horror pics and legging out to $86.3M stateside and $269.5M global. The pic’s director Michael Chaves, after being discovered by New Line execs Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter and assigned to helm 2019’s The Curse of La Llorona (Small Movie, Big Profits title from that year’s Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament), was invited to take the reins here .

Scream VI Spyglass/Paramount Net Profit: $60M

After rebooting the Scream franchise in 2022 ($81.6M domestic, $137.7M global) with stars from the original franchise plus new ones, and genre filmmakers Radio Silence in the directors chair(s), a sequel was quickly ordered. What sent this one to another stratosphere was the halo effect of its star Jenna Ortega , who was coming off of Netflix’s most watched series ever, Wednesday. The stabbing action saw her and Scream 2022’s star Melissa Barrera head to NYC for the first time in the franchise. Fans loved it enough at a B+, the same high grade as the previous Scream and still a best for the franchise. Big turnout by Latino and Hispanic moviegoers at 38% delivered the biggest opening for the 27-year old series at $44.4M domestic, which yielded $108.2M domestic, and $169M worldwide, the second highest-grossing Scream movie ever after the 1996 original. Spyglass is rebooting this movie again for part 7, with the exit of Ortega and the firing of Barrera due to her online Gaza War remarks. The original franchise scribe Kevin Williamson will direct, with series OGs Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in talks.

Evil Dead Rise New Line Net Profit: $46M

What happens when you take exciting movies and pivot them from streaming to theaters? You make money. This New Line reboot of the Sam Raimi franchise was destined to go to HBO Max, ordered up during the Jason Kilar-WarnerMedia era when they were pumping millions into original films for the service. Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav has the studio shift away from that strategy (for the most part — yes there are exceptions of the reverse, i.e., New Line’s Stephen King movie Salem’s Lot transitioning from theaters to Max), with Evil Dead Rise being one of those titles. Warner Bros distribution and marketing execs noticed how the trailer for Evil Dead Rise electrified at CineEurope and opted to give the movie a domestic release; first firing it up out of SXSW. The pic got a B CinemaScore, higher than the 2013 reboot of Evil Dead which landed a C+. Every horror movie had a marketing hook that resonates and is creepy, re: the masked guy in The Black Phone or the wicked smiling people in Smile . Here it’s the evil mom, and the trailer where she’s trapped in the elevator. Evil Dead Rise opened to a solid $24.5M stateside in the face of a marketplace that was still being dominated by Super Mario Bros in its third weekend. Final take was $67.2M domestic and $147M worldwide.

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