This movie had all the potential in the world, but somehow they managed to screw it up royally. I decided that in order to find out exactly who it was that is to blame for the disaster that is Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie I would take a look at everyone involved.

Special Effects: The effects of this movie ranged from above average to piss poor. The scenes with the dragons flying around and fighting were the best in the movie. Then we’ve got scenes like the one where the river catches on fire. Now I know that fire is far from being the easiest thing to animate but come on, that was the most blatant computer generated image that I have ever seen in a movie. Whoever it was that allowed it to be put into the movie that way should be publicly flogged.

Costume Design: I thought that they were doing a fairly good job until I saw what they did with the elves. Honestly are some pointy ears and cardboard cutout masks the best they could do? The closest looking thing to a real elf was the old guy who healed Ridley, but even he didn’t look much like an elf.

Script Writers: Remove these people from the human gene pool immediately. These guys pretty much had a license to write whatever they could imagine. But instead they go and come up with crappy imitations of scenes out of other movies. The best example? The bar scene. They could have just cut and pasted straight from Star Wars. Hell they should have cut and pasted straight from star wars. At least then they would have shown something interesting. Then there was the idea of the hero and his idiotic side kick. Anyone else get flashbacks of Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger? And then there was the dialogue which at points gets to be so bad that I have to hit the fast forward button to keep from wanting to hurt things. They made the Empress Savina so naive that I wanted to pull my hair out. Ridley was all over the intelligence scale. At times he was brilliant, like in the maze and other times I wondered if his brain fell out of his head like when he handed the Rod of Savril over to Damodar. And then there was Snails. This character was so poorly written that it was almost offensive. The only other movie character I’ve seen who’s bumbling idiocy could possibly match that of Snails was Jar Jar Binks from The Phantom Menace. Personally I think that both of those characters belong in front of a firing squad.

Director: This was his first shot at directing a full length motion picture and it had damned well better be his last. I am not a movie director nor have I ever claimed to be, but even I could have done a better job than this buffoon. Was he even paying attention when Damodar walked out wearing blue lipstick? He might actually have made a decent rip off of Darth Vader if he hadn’t looked like he just got back from a cross-dressing convention and didn’t quite clean off all the makeup. It was pretty clear from the acting that the actors were getting absolutely no direction what so ever. Best example of this? When Savina is trying to explain to Profion and the council why her way is the right way and Jeremy Irons, who plays Profion, is going all out in a fairly impressive display of acting while Thora Birch, who plays Savina, is looking more like a scared child than a defiant empress.

Actors: I think that they were the only good thing about this movie. Actually only 3 of them were really any good; Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch and Marlon Wayans. Jeremy, well personally I think that he could make a decent performance out of just about anything. There were a few places where I think that he may have over done it, but I can’t really blame him considering what he had to work with. Marlon, despite what you might think about his character, played it almost perfectly. I think that he gave the writers exactly what they wanted. Unfortunately that’s just not what anyone else wanted. Thora, she was given line after line that would have been considered pure idealist silliness under normal circumstances but she some how managed to make them sound at least half way serious.

There are only 2 reasons why I’ve watched this move more than once: 1) because I get to see fairly well animated dragons and 2) because I happen to think that Thora Birch is cute. Some people say that they watch it for the fights. For those people I say go rent or buy The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, that movie’s just so much better it’s not even funny.