Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 7 February

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (Goldstein/Daley, 2023)

On Saturday nights at our house, we have a regular indulgence called “Hollywood at Home”. (Thanks, subscriber JL of Freemans Bay.)

During the rest of the week I watch stuff for work or – when it comes the Premier League – for pain.

Saturday nights are for fun. I try and find something that will entertain the whole household and also show off the superior firepower of our home theatre battle station.

And, if we are suitably entertained, I go ahead and recommend it to you lovely people here.

Which brings us to the unlikely candidate, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, another attempt at franchise building from toy company Hasbro (who now own the famous role-playing game that is the film’s inspiration).

This looks like the kind of thing we should run a mile from. Cynical corporate anti-art profiteering.

And yet, it’s an enormous amount of fun and the early-2023 cinema audiences who clearly avoided it for whatever reason, missed out on a light-hearted, self-aware romp that leans hard on its affable cast and leans in on the fairly ridiculous premise.

That premise is that the D&D world of bards, wizards, sorcerers (not the same as a wizard), druids (not the same as a wizard or a sorcerer), paladins (also not the same as … you get the picture) etc. is like a jocular version of Lord of the Rings with Hugh Grant enjoying himself enormously as a villain who thinks he’s the hero.

Look, I’m not explaining this very well but that’s because you don’t need to follow the plot all that closely (I didn’t). Just enjoy all the banter and some neat set-pieces that make decent use of the picturesque Game of Thrones locations of Iceland and Ireland.

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Where to watch Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves