As always, what follows will be a 100% honest movie review from a dude that has no agenda other than escaping for a couple of hours and chomping some corn.
I readily admit to going into ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ fully expecting to be disappointed. I had heard that it shamelessly demasculated the guys and empowered the women. And if I’m being honest, it totally did. Chris Pine was the defacto leader and yet was kind of a bumbler, getting by on charm and an enthusiastic confidence in himself and his friends. Hugh Grant was his stock character…charming in a benign but smarmy, oily way. Michelle Rodriguez was the muscle, Sofia Lillis was powerful and confident. Justice Smith was weak and lovesick. Pretty much across the board, the women were superior to the guys with the exception of an over-serious Zenk Yendar, portrayed enigmatically by Regé-Jean Page. There was even a cameo by Bradley Cooper that was BLATENTLY demasculating. And yet, I loved the dude characters all the more. Chris Pine’s charm is next level and carried what could have been a tragically un-entertaining movie. This movie could have easily fallen into the current Hollywood proclivity of switching traditional gender roles and been a complete FAIL. Instead, the writing was perfectly attuned to the character’s strengths and deftly made fun of itself. There will undoubtably be a D&DII and my big fear is that they will try to catch lightning in a bottle again. This almost never works (I say almost because I’m sure it happened once or twice but I couldn’t name one off the top of my head). And that would be a shame. But living in the moment, I found this movie endearing and am giving it a 3.75/5! My best advice to WB: Don’t try to demasculate the dudes in the next one or let D&DHAT stand on it’s own.