This weekend I watched the Dungeons & Dragons movie. This movie is, with the possible exception of Bring It On, the worst fucking movie I have ever seen. What are Jeremy Irons and Richard O'Brien even doing in this movie (aside from acting circles around everyone else [see footnote 1])? By the end of it, Jeremy Irons is (possibly in an attempt at damage control) pretty clearly mocking the whole thing, and even so, his performance only improves the scenes he is in.
As bad as this movie is, you'd think that they would have managed to sidestep a few easily avoided, glaringly obvious stupidities. For instance, despite its title, the movie is not actually set (as far as I can tell) in any of the official Dungeons & Dragons "worlds," robbing it of a potential wealth of detail and back-story, and rendering it no more Dungeons & Dragonsy than any other piece-of-shit cheesy-ass fantasy movie (see footnote 2). Additionally, the people responsible for this movie didn't seem to be able to decide if they wanted it to be a spectacular epic fantasy, or a slapstick episode of Herc & Xena. The two lovable rogue main characters bumble along, bickering and pratfalling (and talking like a couple of wisecracking modern urban youths - another excruciatingly bad choice), until they are killed by this dude named Damodar (see footnote 3) in a dismally shot scene that is surprising for both its brutality and the complete absence of the kind of satisfaction you'd expect to get from watching the demise of such a pair of retarded nincompoops. Then Dr. Who resurrects the "hero" retarded nincompoop, but they leave his black sidekick dead. While I was kind of glad that they left Jar Jar for the worms, it kind of made it worse that they let the white retard live while the black retard had to die.
The best thing about this movie, after Richard O'Brien's sickening smile, is the fact that they're looking for a magical rod, which leads to all kinds of lines like, "Damodar also seeks the rod," and "give me the rod!" which really made me snicker. The worst thing about this movie was that it was ever made in the first place.
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1. "Circles" might not quite cover it. I might suggest "tori," but it could very well be that the pattern described by their acting, with respect to the other acting in the movie, is some incredibly complex manifold as yet unknown to mathematicians, possibly of uncountable, or at least infinite, dimension.
2. Perhaps the exception here is the incredibly uncreative names for powerful items, like the "Rod of Red Dragon Control." Oooh, good one, guys; clearly that meisterwerk of inventiveness could only have its roots at TSR headquarters.
3. This Damodar guy is actually pretty rad. He's your typical evil strongman lackey type, but he looks and acts like a cross between a male Angelica Huston and Ben Kingsley. Also, he has flourescent blue lips.
As bad as this movie is, you'd think that they would have managed to sidestep a few easily avoided, glaringly obvious stupidities. For instance, despite its title, the movie is not actually set (as far as I can tell) in any of the official Dungeons & Dragons "worlds," robbing it of a potential wealth of detail and back-story, and rendering it no more Dungeons & Dragonsy than any other piece-of-shit cheesy-ass fantasy movie (see footnote 2). Additionally, the people responsible for this movie didn't seem to be able to decide if they wanted it to be a spectacular epic fantasy, or a slapstick episode of Herc & Xena. The two lovable rogue main characters bumble along, bickering and pratfalling (and talking like a couple of wisecracking modern urban youths - another excruciatingly bad choice), until they are killed by this dude named Damodar (see footnote 3) in a dismally shot scene that is surprising for both its brutality and the complete absence of the kind of satisfaction you'd expect to get from watching the demise of such a pair of retarded nincompoops. Then Dr. Who resurrects the "hero" retarded nincompoop, but they leave his black sidekick dead. While I was kind of glad that they left Jar Jar for the worms, it kind of made it worse that they let the white retard live while the black retard had to die.
The best thing about this movie, after Richard O'Brien's sickening smile, is the fact that they're looking for a magical rod, which leads to all kinds of lines like, "Damodar also seeks the rod," and "give me the rod!" which really made me snicker. The worst thing about this movie was that it was ever made in the first place.
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1. "Circles" might not quite cover it. I might suggest "tori," but it could very well be that the pattern described by their acting, with respect to the other acting in the movie, is some incredibly complex manifold as yet unknown to mathematicians, possibly of uncountable, or at least infinite, dimension.
2. Perhaps the exception here is the incredibly uncreative names for powerful items, like the "Rod of Red Dragon Control." Oooh, good one, guys; clearly that meisterwerk of inventiveness could only have its roots at TSR headquarters.
3. This Damodar guy is actually pretty rad. He's your typical evil strongman lackey type, but he looks and acts like a cross between a male Angelica Huston and Ben Kingsley. Also, he has flourescent blue lips.
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I've also read all the "Horatio Horblower" novels, and am currently working my way through the "Nathanial Drinkwater" series. The non-fiction books alone on the subject take up 3 shelves in my tiny apt.
There's just something about that period and life that fascinates the hell out of me.