This review originally appeared on RPG.NET from where I saved the text, but it’s gone now so I can’t link to it or even credit the reviewer.

Anyway… it is too good to be forgotten …

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Caution: This review contains a few spoilers, but then again so does every AD&D module released from 1976 to 1999. Consider yourself forewarned.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST DUNGEONS & DRAGONS WARS: EPISODE I
Theorem: A film does not need to be fun in order to be good, and vice versa.
Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List are good films, but they are by no means fun.
Bloodsport and Cloak and Dagger are fun films, but they aren’t all that good.

Dungeons & Dragons is not a good film. It is, in fact, a terrible film by any of my standard, objective measures. Its dialogue is a laughable mutant strain of faux Old English and contemporary slang (“Thou hast a way cool broadsword +5, mine puissant dude. Whoa.”). Most of the fantasy society we are shown in the film looks like a Renaissance Festival that got out of hand about fifteen years ago and conquered the local civil authorities. Also, if the creators of the Final Fantasy series of video games know that one of their cities is missing, they can find it in this movie.

Still, while it is not a good film, Dungeons & Dragons is a fun film- surprisingly fun. Whatever else it might be, it is certainly never boring. And it has an earnest affability about it- this flawed, stunted misfit of a film was crafted with love, and it conceals a handful of fine and pleasant surprises that will reward the patient and open-minded viewer.

THE PLOT (Such as it is…)
The Dungeons & Dragons film is set in and around the neo-Medieval Empire of Izmer, which appears to be a disagreementocracy in which an all-male council of bearded mages counterbalances a dew-cheeked young Empress (Thora Birch) who thinks that mages and commoners should be equal. This means little, since we’re never really shown a wider slice of this conflict outside the speeches of a few noble aristocrats and a few obviously evil (hey, they’re dressed in black) mages. However, the Empress’ naivete gives the scheming sorceror Profion (Jeremy Irons), a true product of the Age Before Prozac, an excuse to rally his bumble-wit peers and attempt to overthrow her.

Profion manipulates his fellow magi by playing up their fears of the Rod of Dragon Control that the Empress carries around with her. He then discovers that another mage, one sympathetic to the Empress, may hold the key to the Rod of Saville – a device that controls Red Dragons. Profion dispatches his servant, Damodar (Bruce Payne), to get the goods and toss the loyalist out a five-thousandth story window. (Izmerian buildings are quite tall for the Age Before Elevators).

As fate (or the DM) would have it, Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans), two young thieves high on life, decide to break into the “magic school” where this loyalist mage keeps his things. An apprentice mage named Marina (Zoe McLellan) catches them in the act. However, while she is casting holding spells on the comic relief, Damodar and his aluminum-foil bedecked goons break in and take her mentor down to zero Hit Points. Marina manages to grab the ancient map he was trying to decode, and hauls the two protesting thieves with her through a magical portal.

They arrive in a back-alley garbage heap in the city below, and interrupt the drunken slumber of a red-bearded dwarf (Lee Arenberg) whose name is apparently Elwood, although the film goes to great lengths to conceal this (I took to calling him “Barf”). The intrepid party (which just picked up its first Fighter-class character) evades Damodar and escapes to the nearby wilderness after discovering that Damodar has framed them for the murder of Marina’s mentor and the civil authorities of Izmer are after them.

Once safely out of Izmer, the party discovers that (hold your breath for this) Marina’s ancient scroll tells them how to find the lair of the dead mage Saville, whose Rod is almost certainly coveted by Profion, whose tomb can only be opened with a fist-sized ruby called the Eye of the Dragon, which is currently in the possession of Nilus (Richard O’Brien), a master of the Thieves’ Guild in a nearby city.

(At this point, Dark Helmet and Colonel Sanders turn to the screen and shout, “Everybody got that?”)

Needless to say, wackiness and high fantasy ensue. There are sword fights and dungeon crawls. One of the comic relief characters meets a heroic death at the hands of Damodar and one of them turns into Luke Skywalker after some highly suspicious elves give him a sword. Profion overacts, Damodar scowls, Barf the Dwarf hits people, dragons soar, fireballs fly, and the Empress enters the fray dressed like Joan of Arc at an ABBA concert. Hey, did you notice that I stopped detailing the point-by-point plot after the first third of the film? I’m trying to tell you something.

ACTORS DIRE AND SCRIPTS MOST PUZZLING
Frankly, I came expecting nothing from the cast of this film, which meant that the few half-tarnished nuggets of joy and skill they actually held out to the audience were received quite well. A remarkably lifelike Jeremy Irons muppet plays Profion as a caucasian Ming the Merciless with slightly less forethought and dress sense, but at least he’s never dull. Bruce Payne pushes his boundaries by playing a tall, cold-eyed bad-ass in armor, just as he did in Highlander: Endfranchise.  Mysteriously, he spends the entire movie wearing blue lipstick, and no, man was not meant to know why. Justin Whalin is engaging, if little else, as Ridley, but Marlon Wayans as Snails seems to have wandered in off the set of Jar Jar Binks: Ghetto Thief.  It certainly was nice of the writers to make him feel at home, but I wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have had to say about Snails’ place in the pecking order. Ugh.

Richard O’Brien, one of the world’s greatest skinny villains, does a flamboyant turn as Nilus, the piratical leader of the world’s least secretive Thieves’ Guild and provides a few moments of mirth. Zoe McLellan as Marina doesn’t stretch her acting muscles much, but I for one was glad to see a somewhat dignified, bookish, intelligent female lead instead of a blond musclewoman in a plate bikini. Still, I was deeply disappointed to see her tossed into the “get captured by bad guys/get rescued by male lead” bin. Render unto us a break, scriptwriters, and (Caution: Heterosexual male opinions coming up) remember that competence is very sexy. Marina is smarter than Ridley and three points more attractive to boot (There, I said it) but the character has her teeth pulled every time she can serve the action as anything but a Deus ex Machina, while Ridley floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Ack.

The plot also involves a half-elven “tracker” named Norda (Kristen Wilson) about whom the less said, the better. Norda wears a mirrored plate-mail breastplate seemingly glued to her torso, and matching greaves. Perhaps she’s wearing the Bloomingdales “Holiday Ranger” ensemble- she has matched sets in at least two colors, bright silver and steel blue. Thora Birch looks as though she can’t wait for the end credits to roll so she can get on with poisoning the agent that got her the part, and the guy who plays the dwarf might still get to have a career, since we never see his real face, just his prehensile dwarven eyebrows. That about does it for the cast, with one notable exception detailed below.

As for the script, it’s made of something brown, and you can swirl your finger in it, but here’s a hint: It’s not chocolate.

FEATURES MOST REDEEMING AND SURPRISES MOST AMUSING
I am not abusing a mind-altering substance when I tell you that, despite what I just wrote, all is not lost.

I entered the theater expecting ruin and devastation, firmly expecting to get my money’s worth only in one thing- a chance to see Tom Baker, the fourth and greatest Doctor Who, in living color in a contemporary film. Baker plays the King of the Elves (by the way, if the makers of the Secret of Mana series of video games know that one of their giant fairy trees has been stolen, they can find it in this movie, too) and is barely on screen for a minute, but what a glorious minute it is. His deep, timeless stare and wide ivory grin serve him as well as ever, and there is more acting power in the intonation of his few lines than there is in the entire rest of the film.

Another mysteriously positive aspect of Dungeons & Dragons comes to light in its treatment of Damodar, the antagonist most directly involved with harrying the main characters. The standard for low-budget fantasy excursions like Dungeons & Dragons is to have some or all of the lieutenant villains be ineffectual twits who exist only to get taken to the cleaners by the plucky heroes. Despite his lipstick, Damodar does not suffer from this affliction- in fact, every time one of the main characters pulls steel on him (except, of course, for the “dramatic” final battle) he kicks their jaw out of its socket without breaking a sweat. In fact, he even kills one of the plucky heroes and tosses the body off a battlement for good measure, before dropping the other male lead like a hot rock and nearly killing him. I deeply appreciate the use of good antagonists as a narrative device, and Damodar gets several moments of glory before his inevitable end. C’est la vie.

Damodar’s goons are a different story. Though feared throughout the land, they fight like Imperial Stormtroopers, which is to say they fight like chronic asthma sufferers in the middle of ragweed season. While this could have been ridiculous, I felt that throwing in the old chestnut of the Elite Force that is neither elite nor forceful was a perfect complement to the rest of the whole cheesy affair. I don’t care whether it was intentional or not- it made me smile.

Damn it, this movie is abysmal, but it’s entertaining, and it tries so hard to be your friend. The plot is like a fever dream, most of the characters are thumbnail sketches, most of the references to Dungeons & Dragons lore (“I’d have to cast a feeblemind spell on myself before I’d find one of you attractive!”) are going to go right over the head of the non-gamer, and some of the special effects deserve to be at the Special Olympics. But, as I said, it was made with love and determination, and that absence of cynicism glows from the film’s core like a warm and inviting light. Anyone trashing this film for its shortcomings is deluding himself and wasting energy. Frankly, this film does not deserve to be discussed in the same terms one would use when discussing The Godfather or Citizen Kane.  It belongs to another genre entirely, what Harlan Ellison once called “elegant trash.” It is Conan stories and warm beer on Friday nights, Doctor Who novelizations and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, unassuming, unpretentious, dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers fun that laughs along with you as you laugh at it.

Dungeons & Dragons is a dumb but loveable puppy of a movie that does not deserve your bitterness or scorn. It is wholesome in its cheesiness, at peace with its own absurdity. It’s not much good, but it is, against all odds, quite fun.

Style: 1 (Unintelligible)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)