Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (12A)
***
There's only one thing wrong with the film adaptation of the durable role-play board game Dungeons and Dragons – it’s a film version of Dungeons and Dragons.
D&D has been around since the 70s and is presumably still being played, but in all that time its image with the wider, reality-focused general public has remained that of being the sad preserve of nerds.
This tries to shake away those tainted associations by making it a zippy, lighthearted adventure romp, but whatever they do, you can’t escape the feeling that a film version of Dungeons and Dragons, filled with dungeons and dragons and sorcerers and sword fighting is really just a Minipops version of Game of Thrones.
Game corp Hasbro bought up D&D in 1999 so this joins the likes of Transformers, G.I Joe and Battleship as another attempt to build a movie series based on action figures or board games. Hasbro usually goes about the process of making big-screen entertainment with a rigid po-faced determination, but there's a slightly ramshackle nature to this.
The cast and crew are, with the exception of hot stuff Regé-Jean Page, made up of people who aren’t accustomed to being the first choice.
Pine is a charming enough screen presence, but apart from his lone Jack Ryan film, is never trusted with a solo star vehicle. Rodriquez had to reattach herself, Dirty Den style, to the Fast and Furious juggernaut after insisting she be killed off. Directors Daley and Goldstein’s previous credits are almost all on TV or writing comedies.
So, it's not a stellar lineup, but it is one full of people who are very keen to impress. The plot may go through some very tired landscapes and routines, but it does so with energy, invention and wit. There are some very funny scenes, and genuinely clever twists which means this Dungeons and Dragons is far more fun than any Dungeon and Dragons film has any right to be.
It’s not all zippy, eager-to-please energy though. As the baddy, Hugh Grant is resolutely the toss not given, and probably all the better for it. Odd that one of his key roles was playing Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe because, with his transparent duplicity and oily insincerity, he is the Tory Party incarnate.
Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Hugh Grant. In cinemas March 31st. Running time: 134 mins.
Leonor Will Never Die (15)
***
The Leonor who will never die is a grandmother (Francisco) who used to be a big shot movie screenwriter, but now lives in poverty and is always forgetting to pay the bills because she’s too busy watching the latest TV series, much to the frustration of her son (Cabrera.)
One day the ghost of her dead son prompts her to enter a screenwriting contest, but before she can complete it she gets hit on the head by a television and falls into a coma where she interacts with her characters and the film crew trying to film it.
This Filipino film is trying to muscle in on the Everything, Everywhere, All At Once mania, possibly a little too hard. Escobar's debut has invention aplenty, and the occasional magical image, but is too busy spinning the audience's heads to really commit to anything.
It's one thing to be meta, but this is always shifting the terms and tone of engagement and the poignancy it is looking to express gets lost in all the wackiness.
Directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar. Starring Sheila Francisco, Bong Cabrera, Rocky Salumbides, Anthony Falcon and Rea Molina. Subtitled. In cinemas April 7h. Running time: 99 mins.
The Big Lebowski (18)
***
What kept people going to the cinema during the pandemic was old films.
When the studios were holding back their big releases, the urge to attend these arenas of communal diversion proved greater than the paucity of new product that was being offered. Post-covid, reissues of classic films are still helping cinemas tick over.
This week it's the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, the one with 60s acid casualty The Dude (Bridges) as the reluctant centre of a complicated film-noir-style detective plot.
There's much to love about Lebowski: Bridges' sublime performance, some glorious dialogue, the idea of the torch of American heroism being symbolically handed on from the Cowboy (Elliott) to the frazzled remains of hippie idealism. But truth be told, I didn't get it when it came out, and a quarter of a century later, I still don’t.
The interplay between the bowling team – Bridges, Goodman and Buscemi – is abrasive and unfunny. Unlike the carpet that really ties the room together, nothing ties the various elements together. I’m sure that is deliberate, to subvert the neatness of Raymond Chandler crime dramas where the detective’s investigation reveals order in the chaos.
But the Coens’ don’t find a dramatically satisfying way to leave audiences none the wiser.
Directed by Joel Coen. 1997. Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sam Elliott. Running time: 112 mins.
Go to www.half-man-half-critic.weebly.com for a review of the Studiocanal home entertainment release of The City Of Lost Children.
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