What’s it about?

A ragtag bunch of thieves must plan an audacious heist after inadvertently stealing a powerful relic for an evil wizard.

What’d we think?

Mandatory disclosure: I play Dungeons & Dragons. I didn’t exactly have high expectations going into this movie, partly as a fan of the tabletop game but also as someone acutely aware of how clumsy an adaptation of a niche property can be when it’s targeting a mainstream audience. So it makes me happy to report that my concern was unwarranted, and I was very pleasantly surprised as both a nerd and a normal person. The story is a straightforward heist caper, and the relative simplicity that comes with this gives the more fantastical worldbuilding a little more room to breathe. The cast is clearly having heaps of fun, with Hugh Grant in full Paddington 2 mode as a wonderfully smug villain and Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page as an irritatingly sincere Paladin being exceptional standouts.

If you’ve been rolling dice for years there are plenty of easter eggs and some all-too-familiar moments (the party repeatedly botching the 5 questions they can ask a corpse after casting Speak With The Dead being a particularly hilarious example), but these never veer into fanservice or come close to alienating the normals in the audience. There’s dungeons, there’s dragons, some great action, and a lot of laughs – this one’s a big recommend.