The D&D movie is *almost* PERFECT (Spoilers)

** SPOILERS **

A woman defends herself against SA and you call her "violent"?!
It's great that a company mods established lore to promote their movie?!

How does Kira change skin tone significantly from baby to teen?!
The Druid and the Sorcerer look like they're 12 yo. Was this intentional to 'attract the youngins'?!
What's with only the Barbarian having era-appropriate underarm hair? Why no other women?!
You support the body shaming with the obese dragon?!
The makeup on the non-humans seemed a little fake to me. YMMV.

What I love most about this movie is how it was clearly made by fans and for fans.
Although not player of DnD myself, I spent some time on college with our localised spin-off TTRPG and could felt like MANY of the situations could happen during gaming session.

PS: I feel sad DnD movie wasn't finacial success, but maybe the budget was just too high (I'm tremediously happy it came to be, but I doubt we will get this kind of flick any time soon). And chinese plague didn't help, neither the bulshit Hasbro was doing.

I’ve never played D&D before and know nothing about the lore. I, however, love fantasy as a genre. As you suspected, I was initially put off by the title of the movie but as soon as I watched the trailer I was intrigued. Can’t say enough great things about the movie – good dialogue, wonderful action scenes, strong acting, funny, very likable characters and (IMO) very good CGI. I didn’t feel like I was missing out at all by not being a D&D enthusiast.

I disagree about Doric. She is working and starting to trust humans

I felt the title was forcing D&D, so I decided not to watch it when it first came out. Fortunately I rented it, and watched it with the family. We have since started a new campaign together.

Finally saw it last night. This really was the best D&D movie ever. Not perfect perhaps, but miles above anything else they've tried. Very well done. I disagree with you on this tho. Doric was as important to the story as Simon. She contributed in ways none of the others could do. And that scene with her and Sophia was priceless. And if that paladin wasn't the classic OP DMPC, they don't exist. I really genuinely enjoyed this movie. Spoiler ahead:
Shame WOTC and Hasbro are dead to me. (not the spoiler)
How is it that every franchise Michelle is in manages to kill her and bring her back? Weird!

I don't like how Dorik is just a girl with horns, could have commited a little more to the true aesthetics of tieflings and add some body paint.

Doric and Simon had completely separate roles and purposes in the film. Combining them would have lost more than it gained.

" I find Irony cuts he who wields it most especially" best line ever. Also particularly like the " well thats a little hurtful" moment.

Its probably not an easter egg but i loved how in so much of the combat, notably one part where the soldiers punch one at a time, and then Holga attacks with the bow, it really felt like you could see the actions playing out piece by piece on the board

Some of the weirdness of the movie (like why Doric only used Wild Shape a lot) suddenly made sense when a friend pointed something out.

Spoilers ahead.

None of the main adventuring party were allowed to do the same thing any of the others could presumably to simplify the archetypes for the average movie-goer; The Sorcerer casts spells, so none of the others can actively cast anything. Holga was great with weapons and martial combat, so the others couldn't really handle themselves in a fight. Doric's Wild Shape was used for espionage because Forge was the party Rogue so none of the others could do typical Rogue things. This left Edgin the Bard with just giving pep talks (Bardic Inspiration helping Holga break free and Simon's T9 counterspell come to mind) and being there because the party needed a face (which meant the Sorcerer couldn't be traditionally charismatic either). If there's a sequel I hope there's more overlap of skills for the adventuring party.

Gotta say, I agree on the criticism of the name.
D&D is not a story. D&D is not a set of characters. D&D is not a world.
D&D is a ruleset, nothing else.
So when some money-hungry exec gets the idea to make "the D&D movie," idk wtf they mean by that! And I'm a ttrpg player! I'd have even less of an idea of what to expect if I wasn't a ttrpg player.

Also tom morello was in the audience of the arena! Hes a famous dnd head

Thank you for this review. This sounds like a movie I would have enjoyed.

I watched the movie with 3 people totally unfamiliar with D&D. And they all found it to be the most entertaining movie they watched in a long time. We really enjoyed it. but yeah… i had to explain afterwards why, at some scenes, i was laughing so much harder than them…
conclusion: fun movie for everyone. even funnier movie for roleplayers. especially when i watched a scene and could literally feel the players behind the characters. like when the bridge collapsed… i was like: "yup, thats totally XY (one of my players)!"

My two biggest gripes with the movie (in a relatively spoiler free summary) are probably pretty obvious for most people.

Tl;Dr mostly because it gets a little long and borders on spoilers at times: Too much of the movie was spoiled by the trailers, and too many of the obstacles in the movie were just swept aside because somebody knew somebody with all of the answers or because somebody already had the items they needed, so all of the obstacles were at most minor inconveniences with the solution always being either "I know a guy" or "oh I have one of those." Bonus gripe for when I realized that the vast majority of the movie could have been cut out without affecting the outcome anyway.

First, as this non-spoiler review heavily indicates, it's really hard to spoil a movie that included so much of the plot, gags, and twists in the trailers. If I hadn't seen a single trailer for this movie, it would have been easily two to three times as enjoyable. I'd have been laughing the whole time, eagerly looking forward to how the story advanced, and I'd have been heavily engaged. Instead, watching the movie was more like marking off a checklist for what I saw in the trailer, and most of the laughs were traded for "oh, yeah, so that's what was happening in the trailer, got it." D&D is not the only franchise guilty of this, as recently the Mario movie was pretty heavily guilty of this, and the MCU is historically awful about this, I'm just saying that having seen ANY trailers for Honor Among Thieves was in part a problem for the movie.

More specifically to the movie, I really wish there had been more variety to the conflict resolution. I realize that the pacing of the movie was basically someone trying to explain a months long campaign to a friend that didn't know anything about D&D in under 2 hours, but it seemed like the solution to literally every problem was just the "I know a guy" trope over and over again. Need a magic caster? I know a guy. Need a druid? I know a guy. Need a magic item? I know a dead guy. Need an oddly specific NPC? We all know that guy. Messed up the puzzle and cant get the item? I took the exact item we needed from this guy I knew. To quote the "Pitch Meeting" script guy, every conflict resolution was "super easy, barely an inconvenience." When SO much of the fun chaos in D&D can be boiled down to "what crazy shenanigans did the players throw at the DM's careful plan this time?", it felt like this movie was afraid to be creative. Plump and grumpy dragon wakes up and attacks the party? If this Druid can become an owl bear, why can't they become a Dragonborn or some other tiny/sub-dragon thing and try to reason with or distract the dragon? The sorcerer is has been pretty useless, let them get a spell wrong and have it work out to their advantage (or you know, maybe explore what makes them a sorcerer and not a wizard in the first place, since we have zero indication of what sort of innate magical bloodline he came from, other than maybe Wild Magic for no reason in a family of wizards). There were dozens of ways to handle every obstacle that was thrown at the party, and yet they always defaulted back to either knowing someone with all of the answers or already having the items they needed in the first place. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, by the end of the movie most of the things they took their time gathering and focusing on ended up not actually serving any significant purposes. Yeah, with the exception of a little character growth on Simon's part, you could have actually cut out literally everything after the party first gathered together and the end result would have been the same. Didn't realize that until just now.

I completely disagree with your "hang-up" about the Tiefling Druid character 4:35 – just because you dont understand or relate to her character development personally doesn't mean she wasnt able to connect with others – I found her character was played perfectly with the right amount of character development to keep the movie under 3 hours – tbh – I would have LOVED to see more about aLL the characters but dont start ripping on characters you dont "get" The scene where Pine outlined and owns his mistake cements the bonds for the entire group INCLUDING the Tiefling and her mistrust of humans in general perhaps outling certain charisma bonuses Pine's character had? Yea Im sorry to disagree with you so strongly but you remove her character and you lose the movie imo – no character in this cast is expendable – the story is that well-written.

To me the movie was good , but not 19/20 more like 15/20, good not perfect :p

I really like that Dragon Magazine cover art on your wall. I had that magazine cover tacked on my wall when I was a teenager in the late 90's (When you could find something like that at the local bookstore.)

Spoilers.

There are several ways I think it would be better to see the movie without D&D game knowledge. My whole group went and saw it and there several times where I noticed our group thinking “that doesn’t work like that”. For instance the chase seen with Dorric after her recon mission. She wildshaped 4-5 times during that scene? Thematically it was awesome but in game you can’t do that, or turn into an owlbear
Overall it was a great movie and we all enjoyed it thoroughly though!

SPOILER MAYBE??

I was initially annoyed at how much they zipped across the map, constantly changing locations. Same with how the quests would get derailed, leading to sidequests, which then got derailed leading to sub-sidequests. About 1/3 of the way through the film I realized how closely this choppy pacing can sometimes infect my own games. I'm confident now, the pacing and plot are meant to mimic the experience at the table. Without breaking the 4th wall. Very cool.

My girlfriend didn't want to see the movie… then she saw the trailer and was totally on board and we all enjoyed the movie through and through…