Hello, I am currently in the process of improving my critical and descriptive writing skills, and I'm doing this through the means of critiquing films. I'd like to post every review I finish here for your reading pleasure.
If anyone has a film that they would like to suggest that I critique, feel free to do so, I will get started on it right away.
Without further adu, here's the next one I finished:
WeirdRaptor's Reviews:
Solomon’s Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie:
Staffs, Dragons, and Thieves, oh My!
Introduction:
Greetings my name is WeirdRaptor, this is my review. In this case, I've chosen the 2000 live-action film adaptation of the role-playing game titled, “Dungeons and Dragons".
Directed by Courtney Solomon
Written by Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright.
Produced by Joel Silver and Courtney Solomon
Music Composed and Conducted by Justin Caine Burnett
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Movie Ratings:
10/10: Perfection, Masterpiece
9/10: Excellent
8/10: Great
7/10: Above Average
6/10: Average
5/10: Decent Fair
4/10: Below Average
3/10: Mediocre
2/10: Bad
1/10: My Neighbor's Vacation Videos Were Better
Opening Thoughts:
My thoughts in a nutshell: while decent, this film, frankly, just wasn’t what it could have been.
Mediocre production values, manageable continuity, sometimes good sometimes poor pacing, cheesy dialogue, under-developed plot, unexplained plot points, and sometimes good sometimes horrible characterization.
I have to say that I had no expectations for this film right from the beginning. The director of the picture was inexperienced, the budget was ridiculously low, and a few of the casting choices were baffling. Justin Whalin and Marlon Wayans as a duo of roughneck fantasy fiction thieves? A normally proportioned man named Lee Arenberg as a dwarf, without forced perspective or scale doubles? Kristen Wilson as the film’s main elf character (half-elf, actually, but they never tell the audience that in the film, I had to find out through the DVD audio commentary)? On top of that, a few casting choices one would have thought would have saved the film didn’t. Jeremy Irons and Bruce Payne as the film’s central villains could (should, actually) have been heavenly, but weren’t. The cameos by Tom Baker and Richard O’Brien were excellent, though.
I will back up these claims with hard evidence throughout this review, so without any further crust before getting to the meat, here it is:
The Review:
The Music of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rate: 7/10
You don’t need to be a big name film music composer to make a good soundtrack, and Justin Caine Burnett proves it. He composed a very enjoyable and fitting score for “Dungeons and Dragons”. Though, to be honest, he could have added more range to it. The maturity of the music in this film is just different ways of playing the same tune. Sometimes, it was played grandly, using trumpets, primarily, making it sound upbeat and triumphant. Other times, it was played to sound eerie, using violins and flutes. And whenever the villains were onscreen, it seemed, they played it menacingly, using drums and various wind instruments, causing it to sound almost exactly like the classic villain theme from the “Star Wars” movies (one could say its amazing they didn’t get sued by John Williams). Regardless, it still has a simple charm, is quite easy to listen to, and very importantly, it was solidly structured.
The Special Effects of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rate: 5/10
The effects were average at best, mediocre at worst, with a few exceptions (the dragons, primarily). The dragons were the central focus of their efforts with the CGI. The director Solomon said that they wanted to make their dragons fast and cat-like. He succeeded. The dragons in this film were actually very agile and were regular killing machines. They were pretty well executed CGI creatures with a real raw element about them. The filmmakers paid very close attention while bringing the winged monsters to life.
It is unfortunate however, that they were the only CG creatures to receive the makers’ undivided attention. The SFX used for when the mages cast spells were very shabby fluid effects. The beholders did not quite match the environment they were in, and the small gray creature that Profion used for gather information looked utterly fake, and the dragon illusion that the character Snails triggers looks just like…an illusion, although in that instance that may have been the director’s intention.
The Character Portrayals and Development of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rating: 5/10
Depending on the depth and realism of a given movie, a director may or may not be obligated to make reasonable characterizations of the characters, but most good movies have a basic standard which each of the character portrayals are expected to meet.
Younger filmmakers often have varied results in meeting this standard of portrayal that their film requires.
DnD Director Solomon, being a complete greenhorn, had a very varied degree of success concerning the development of his film’s characters. Observe:
The characters Ridley Freeborn (the film’s central protagonist) and Damdar (the film’s secondary villain) are probably the most competently written of the whole lot.
Ridley’s motives and reasoning are decently well explained. He hates the upper class people of Izmir (the mages), because the common people like him are basically slaves (and if you’re not conforming to their law, you’re an outlaw like him). He represents what the common people go throughin this rotting, corrupted kingdom, but what we are given in the final cut of the film is a very loose and general explanation. One of the cut scenes actually sheds a lot more light on why he specifically hates the upper class people/the mages so much. His father was a man who dared to better himself, so the mages ultimately killed him (“they erased his mind” Ridley said). It’s a shame that scene was cut. It helps the audience understand him so much better. Otherwise, he just comes across as an immature young man nursing a nonspecific grudge.
Damadar’s motives are obvious. He’s just a soldier who was corrupted by the film’s main villain, Profion. And the motives that are added during the actually course of the film are even more obvious. Something called the “Mind Frayer” is placed inside his body that will eventually kill him if he doesn’t get exactly what his dark master wants. The “Mind Frayer” looks like two monstrous worms that come out of his ears, and he’s actually able to manipulate them for his own purposes at times.
Examples of horribly written characters are Snails, Ridley’s best friend and sidekick, and the sorry excuse that this film has to settle for in comic relief, and Porfion, “the evil mage”, as he’s dubbed in the opening narration. To put it nicely, they’re caricatures.
In sort, Snails is a stereotypical “token black” who speaks as if he were in modern times in a modern city. He is incompetent, he is annoying, and he is a complete fool, but not a funny way. The saddest thing about this is that he’s supposed to be the comic relief…yet most of the humor in the exchanges he has with Ridley (or any other character for that matter is derived from a source outside of him.
Profion, is just a villain without much of an established motive. In the opening narration he’s simply called “the evil mage, Profion”. This allows Director Solomon to be lazy, as he’s merely labeled Profion as evil and does not need to bother with making him human, or bother giving him much of an identity. All we know if that he a particularly powerful mage in the empire, and that he has much influence. His motives are to seize control of the world. Oh, and he appears to be insane, if Jeremy Irons’ performance indicates anything. That’s good and all, except, why is he the way he is? Is he just afraid of change and will do anything to make sure things are run the way they always have, even to the extent of taking over Izmir, himself? Perhaps he, himself, comes from a very tragic background and has some changes that he wishes to implement into how Izmir is run, and is just going about it in a more sneaky and under-handed manner than the young empress? Perhaps he has much darker intentions that require the cooperation of all of Izmir. Are any of the above ever even vaguely implied? No. We are merely given a completely evil and insane mage with vague high ambitions and absolutely no redeeming qualities, basically a classic melodramatic and stereotypical cartoon villain.
The rest of the characters fall somewhere in-between “Good” and “Terrible” in various degrees. Some are better written than others. The young mage and female lead, Marina, was fairly well characterized, but then, she really wasn’t that deep. Nor was their dwarf character, but I suppose that doesn’t change the fact that they got him dead on.
The Casting and Acting of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rating: 5/10
I don’t whom they hired as Casting Directors for this film, but the casting is one area where the ball was dropped many times.
Justin Whalin is manageable as the rogue/thief Ridley Freeborn, but nothing special by any stretch of the imagination. He is able to portray the immature smart Alec side of Ridley very well without any difficulty, its towards the end of the film when it began to be become more serious that his performance became sub-par. In Snails’ death scene, he let out one of the worse “NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” in film history. On top of that, his expression is very telling in that he was forcing the grieved look on Ridley’s face too much.
Marlon Wayans was so bad that it was tempting to stab one’s eyes out (or just his) in every scene he caused to crumble apart. I’m no Wayans fan, but in my opinion, the members if that family do manage to be mildly amusing, usually. Part of the problem with Wayans is that he was filming another movie (“Requiem of a Dream”) at the same time as “Dungeons and Dragons” and had absolutely no time to really commit. So, they just shot him out as quickly as they could within the matter of a few weeks, and it shows. His scenes are under-prepared, the character is almost one dimensional, and all his jokes and punch lines fell very short of they obviously intended to be.
Jeremy Irons: A brilliant move, or so you would have thought. Irons one of the very few actors to win an Oscar, an Emmy, AND a Tony. As an actor, his talents are celebrated and very well respected. Rivaled only by the best in the business. So what went wrong? Well, Irons is infamous for having a tendency to go wild with his performances and thus, eating up the scenery, but most directors he’s worked with have had the experience and know how to work with him. Solomon did not. What he had in mind, evidently, was a purely evil and insane villain and probably gave the poor actor very simple motivations and little else to work off of as a reference, so Irons just made due with what he had and created a caricature villain.
Bruce Payne: I wouldn’t call this bad casting, but it is certainly oxymoron casting (Payne as a thug). He could have played the sadistic brute Damadar in his sleep.
Zoe McLellan: The character that McLellan plays is a simple and straight forward enough that almost any actress could have played her: a young, stuck-up, and naive aristocrat. The character to begin with was not very deep and complex in any way, shape or form. McLellan was not given a whole lot of room to mess up, and she didn’t, but I would hardly praise her for it.
Lee Aranberg: What can be said of Lee Aranberg’s Elwood Gutworthy? He was a dwarf. He fits the profile perfectly. He has the voice, the face, and the proportions. All he lacks is the fact that the budget didn’t allow for any of those fancy tricks that allowed actors such as Elijah Wood to appear as if they really were even more pint-sized in Peter Jackson’s recent “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. If they could have made him shorter, the casting would have been perfect. On the flip side of that, Aranberg was also not granted much room to botch it up. His dwarf character was very textbook.
Kirsten Wilson: Not to sound like a racist purist, but elves are a part of European mythology, and are ironically a Caucasian race. I don’t mind a dark skinned elf, as they do exist in some game settings and mythologies, but some reasonable explanation was always provided. While the filmmakers did have a reasonable explanation for a dark-skinned elf, they did not provide it in the film, itself. In the audio commentary they explain that she’s a half-elf. So why couldn’t they just take the time to have one of the other characters ask Norda how she’s a dark skinned elf? The fault lies in the filmmakers, not the actress on this one. Wilson actually did a pretty good job in her role. She was able to convey wisdom and the elegance that her character was supposed to have, but yet again, she is another case that wasn’t given much leeway to screw it up.
Thora Birch: Not much can be said of Birch’s flat performance as the idealistic young empress. She pretty much played a one-note role (by no fault of her own, though).
Richael O’Brien: O’Brien played the thief guild master Xilas in a few scenes in the film. He is a back stabbing, lowdown, sneaky, charismatic, and clever witted character. O’Brien was able to portray this so perfectly, you almost swear you were watching scenes from another film, under some other director’s control. His timing was perfect, his attitude was perfect, and he completely stole the show from everyone else on-screen (okay, not a difficult task, but still).
Tom Baker: Tom Baker makes a cameo as an aged elf king who heals the hero after a particularly foolish attempt to fight the mage/fighter Damadar. He was able to bring some grade A class into his scene with his dead on portrayal of the wisdom and gentle nature of the character he was playing. His voice carried the exposition he had to get across wonderfully and his scene is the easily among the most memorable.
The Story Telling and Pacing of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rating: 4/10
The story telling for this film, I have to say, was a real trial. Poorly written and repetitive dialogue really held it back for the early part of the story. Repeatedly, we are told of the situation with the Empress Savina, her reform, her rod, the fanatical and easily led council, Profion’s plans for the rod(s), and how unfair their way of governing the nation is. Equal and fair treatment to all (a view I much agree with) is crammed down our throats to the point where it is actually nausea inducing. Then before anything could actually be explained properly, the filmmakers went straight to work at setting up the heroes.
After the initial set-up, the story went straight into “Action Mode”, where some plot devices are introduced and explained, but mainly the heroes get through a large stretch of the film through fight scenes.
Then, in the final stretch, starting with a character death, the film suddenly takes a more slow-paced and dramatic turn out of the blue. Not good story-telling.
…Which brings us to pacing. The film suffers from its own director not knowing how to pace the film.
The early parts of the film move at such a fast pace that story telling is sacrificed and the audience is given only a bare bones amount of information to get themselves into the film…and this was during the exposition centered part of the movie. Then, it suddenly becomes action paced, or was supposed, but this is where most of the rest of the plot is clarified. Then, it takes a more slow and ponderous pace, ending with a climatic battle between gold and red dragons.
The proper balance between pacing and story telling is a precious commodity that each individual film should find. This film’s story telling and pacing were at constant conflicts with each other, when they should be working in favor of each other. The final result was contrived story telling and disjointed pacing.
The Production Values, Continuity, and Budget of Dungeons and Dragons:
Rating: 4/10
Production Values: I will use the weapons and the magical items we see in the film as the prime examples.
Weapons: The swords look like they’re made out of aluminum or plastic, to be frank. The director admits that they were made from a special material that wouldn’t flint and get in anyone’s eyes. That’s good and all, but couldn’t they have looked just a little more real? The swords in other fantasy films are a far cry better than what we see here, and they’re probably made from the same material.
The dwarven ax that Elwood/the dward carries. It plastic. It looks like they went to a local “Toy ëR’ Us” store and bought the actor a toy ax to fling around.
Magical Items: The staffs shown throughout the movie that are used to control dragons also look like toys straight out of the “Power Rangers” toy line. The “Eye of the Dragon” (a key used to enter a huge chamber where the other rod is hidden looks like it was bought at a Renaissance Fair.
This also serves as an example of the effects the low budget had on everything. Its apparent that they were unable to afford props that looked credible in any sense and just made do with the best that they could find.
On top of that, only a few sets were used, because it was cheaper just to film on location in Prague. For the setting of the film, they went to every old castle, ruin, and structure that they were given privilege to film at. The settings of the film look great. The old buildings really did help sell the idea that this was an ancient alternate world that they were in.
Continuity: While there are not too blaringly obvious continuity faults in the film, there are still some very noticeable ones.
The Dwarf’s Beard: The colour of his beard changes a few times (from dark red to a much lighter reddish orange by the end of the movie).
Norda’s the Dark-Skinned Half-Elf’s Armor: It changes size and shape from scene to scene.
In one scene when the dwarf walks into an invisible force field, he is knocked back, but you can see the cable they were using.
All in all, nothing to out of the ordinary for many movies.
Budget: This film was made for $35 million dollars, total. 15 years ago, this might have been good enough, but not today. With $35 million, they were only able to tell about half the story that the director had in mind. They were also forced to settle for mediocre special effects, sub-par props and costumes. They were forced to battle the elements while shooting on location in a country where nighttime is limited (there are many scenes taking place when its dark, so this was a huge problem for them), and the weather is in constant change over there, causing several atmospheric continuity errors.
While it is impressive that the director raised all that money by himself, what he got out of it is not. The studio was unwilling to invest any money in his project, and he settled too little.
Closing Thoughts:
When all is said and done, the central problems with this film are very evident. The first being that the man at the helm just did not have the background as a filmmaker required to bring something of this magnitude to the big screen. While watching the film, it is apparent that he poured his heart and soul into each scene, but lacked the polished skill to truly bring it out effectively, most of the time. If anything, the director can only be blamed for being too enthusiastic and impatient about getting to be a filmmaker of an adaptation of a role-playing game he has much love for.
The other problem being the matter of budget. Courtney Solomon made the film for $35 million. That’s balancing that between the actors, the costumes, the props, the sets, the cameras, the film, the shooting locations, the make-up, and the computer generated special effects. By listening to the audio commentaries for the film, and watching the deleted scenes (both with or without Director’s Commentary), its apparent that he had much higher ambitions for the project that were just impossible for what he had to work with.
Regardless, with his own inexperience and a hideously low budget working against him, he still managed to put together a decent film. I don’t think I need to explain the situation again in order to tell readers that that shows promise in a filmmaker, but showing promise was not enough to make this a solidly good film.
Final Rating: 5/10
