Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves | movie review
Liches, Tabaxi and owlbears, oh my!
Movie summary: 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. (IMDb)
It's been a little frustrating for me watching so many people finally get around to watching Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves at home and rueing the fact that they missed it in the cinema, because they'd love a sequel that we're almost certainly never going to get. I did watch it at the cinema and can confirm that it was brilliant to see on the big screen, and I'm glad I didn't miss that experience.
This is just a genuinely fun movie with a core group of such likeable characters, played by a cast who seem to be having a great time and displaying about as perfect a mix of chemistry in all on-screen combinations that it is a crying shame that this is probably the only time we'll get to see them together. The script gives them all multiple moments to shine and every last one of them takes the opportunity to do so.
I know there will be some more cynical people out there who will see the word 'fun' being used to describe a movie and immediately roll their eyes, but it really can't be helped because it is honestly the perfect adjective to describe Honour Among Thieves. This isn't a movie like Thor: Love and Thunder where taking the story seriously was sacrificed to cram in a few more jokes either, as it always pulls up short of going too far.
There are dual antagonists here and, while one of them isn't a real threat to the group, they are still both taken seriously by the story and the characters - something Love and Thunder conspicuously failed to do for the first two-thirds of its runtime. So if you read the word 'fun' to describe a movie and think that it's just going to be 'typical' blockbuster fluff, then you should definitely think again.
The key reason the entire movie and it's more ludicrous (in a good way!) moments work is because the characters are given centre stage. It's really easy to connect with such an enjoyable group - Chris Pine's Edgin standing out the most, although the others are right there with him in terms of performance quality - and because they take the serious things seriously, so do you.
One of the few criticisms I'd have is that some of the VFX work doesn't quite look right, although those are rare exceptions and they only stand out because 90%+ of Honour Among Thieves looks fantastic - including what appears to be a surprising amount of practical work when it comes to creating the fantasy races. It's a downside of a movie being set in such a magic-heavy world that a lot of visual enhancement was needed and the budget, while still a lot of money obviously, was fairly low for a summer blockbuster.
It was also a little disappointing that a story with such a tight focus on a small group of characters ends up massively raising the stakes to needing to save an entire city - although the movie is heading in that direction from very early on, so you can't really blame it. I would've just preferred to see the characters stop events from even getting to that point and keeping it centred on them, but that's just a personal niggle.
In case you couldn't tell, I really liked Honour Among Thieves and, in addition to seeing it at the cinema, have also watched it twice at home and keep being reminded of it while I play through Baldur's Gate III, which is no bad thing. I really do wish it had done better and that we could've got at least one more movie out of this cast and setting because I loved spending time with them and just wanted the movie to keep going, which is a pretty damn good compliment in my opinion.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is a great movie that unfortunately flew under the radar when released in cinemas and so it's not likely that we'll see a sequel, which is a damn shame. The cast is fantastic, with the absolute perfect chemistry between all the main characters and a fun, funny script that remembers to make the antagonists a genuine threat too.
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