Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves balances wit and charm
Harry Khachatrian
John Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the writer/director duo behind Date Night (2018) and Horrible Bosses (2011), lent their comedy writing chops to Dungeons & Dragons after a spate of failed attempts to adapt the fantasy roleplaying game to film.
Honor Among Thieves interweaves fantasy genre platitudes with lighthearted banter, producing something akin to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, with the superheroes in space swapped out for knights and mages.
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The film follows the valiant escapades of four disparate misfits with a common cause. Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) is a swashbuckling cavalier whose wit and charisma bind the group together. Like a medieval project manager, Darvis sets the meetings, assigns the roles, and devises the plans.
Meanwhile, Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) is the brawn behind their operation, Simon (Justice Smith) is a magician with a meager sense of self-confidence, and Doric (Sophia Lillis) is a shape-shifting druid with a general distrust for humans.
It is this delicate balance of skills among the characters that helps the film evade the prevalent character trap that has befallen such modern film franchises as Captain Marvel or the new Star Wars trilogy. The trap arises from writers overcompensating with their protagonists, writing characters, often heroines, to be so perfect that they are never afforded the chance to fail and the opportunity to develop. In Honor Among Thieves, Holga’s strength is balanced by Darvis’s adept planning. And Simon, throughout the film, overcomes his trepidation, maturing from performing cheap parlor tricks to hustle audiences to becoming a fully fledged sorcerer.
Hugh Grant, who plays Forge, an unscrupulous con artist, has largely eschewed his mainstay role as the heartthrob lead in rom-coms, opting to take on various antagonists, from the philanthropic billionaire in Guy Ritchie’s Operation Fortune to a sleazy investigator in Ritchie’s The Gentlemen — all of which he has performed consummately. And Honor Among Thieves is no exception. With each subtle gesture, Grant exudes a disarming charm with which he dwarfs his debauchery, slyly maneuvering his way to power.
In typical Dungeons & Dragons style, Darvis and the team undertake various quests in pursuit of a broader mission. In one of the funnier scenes, they’re in a graveyard, resuscitating corpses to wrest directions from; in the next, they’re barreling through an underground tomb, chased by an obese dragon as their heist goes awry.
The film’s saving grace, and what sets it apart from previous (failed) attempts at adapting Dungeons & Dragons, is that it never takes itself too seriously. Toward the film’s third act, when brainstorming how to overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, one character wantonly suggests using magic, to which Simon, almost breaking through the fourth wall, interjects, explaining that you can’t just use magic as a deus ex machina on every snag the script runs into. There are specific rules, and the characters are bound by them.
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It isn’t the next fantasy epic in league with Lord of the Rings, but neither is Dungeons & Dragons bloated to the same heights or proportions. At about two hours, it rarely meanders; it’s well-paced and offers a fine balance of mirth and magic to keep you and your family entertained throughout. Enjoy it until the studios decide to wring the franchise dry with a desultory stream of sequels.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a computer engineer in Toronto, pursuing his MBA.