Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005)

I'm not a big Dungeons and Dragons guy. I know very little about it, primarily that it's some kind of fantasy romanticizing the Dark Ages. Yeah, virtual slavery, a plague, and a deadly apartheid against women is hot to me too, I guess. The other thing I know about Dungeons and Dragons is they play their game with different kinds of dice. I found that out when I went to a local games store, and picked up a twenty-sided die to play Monopoly with. It completely changes the game when you can potentially shoot from Go to Free Parking in one roll.

Anyway, I never saw the first Dungeons and Dragons, which was in the theater and had a Wayans brother in it. My friends were adamant that I see it, because they said it was hilarious. We rented this sequel over the summer, with the assumption it'd be as funny as that one.

As far as I can tell, Bruce Payne reprises his role from the first movie as the Blue Lipped Guy. I'm trying to remember what happened, but it seemed like a chick was cursed, and her homeboy wanted to save her, so he had to assemble a team of elves and shit to cure her. There's something about unleashing a dark dragon too, and I think Blue Lipped Guy is doing that, and I also think he cursed the chick so she couldn't stop him.

The summary on IMDb was just too funny not to include:

Based on the phenomenally successful role-playing game,
Dungeons & Dragons 2 takes you deeper into the dark and fantastical world of
this fantasy epic. When the evil sorcerer Damodar braves a perilous whirlwind
vortex to steal the elemental black orb he declares a sinister plan of vengeance
against the kingdom of Ismir. Berek, a decorated warrior, and Melora, an amateur
sorceress join four heroes representing Intelligence, Wisdom, Honor and Strength
to battle against Damodar's growing army of gruesome creatures, flying harpies
and an ice dragon to reach a vault room holding the orb. Together, they build
their own army to retrieve the orb using elemental forces to defeat Damodar
before he summons the sleeping black dragon whose omnipotent evil powers could
lay waste to the entire kingdom. Written by Press Release (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406728/plotsummary)

Damodar and Ismir? That's just plain ridiculous. I was shocked when I went to IMDb and found out this movie was only a shade over 100 minutes long. It felt like three hours. My friends, I guess, had played the game before, and knew people that played more often. My experience with the culture was way more scant, and as such, I didn't get the jokes they were making about things in the movie. The plot just seemed like an endless series of bad things happening, spells being cast at the last moment, and things being temporarily resolved.

I was very angry with this movie. It was so banal it made me sick to my stomach. There was a part where an elf teleported, and her arm was stuck in a stone block or something. It was just weird and disgusting. Also, the dialogue was rife with that polysyllabic discourse that's more pedantic than sophisticated, which annoys the piss out of me. I don't know what it is with these fantasy types where they gotta take themselves so seriously all the time, but it gives me a headache. You lose the right to take yourself seriously when you can put characters named Damodar in a movie with a straight face.

Don't touch this sack of ass crack. The friends I watched the movie with were in agreement that it was a complete waste of time and money--we spent a dollar to rent it on dollar-movie-night, and we still felt robbed, because we could've seen something else. To quote a buddy of ours who said one time, in a totally unrelated situation "something about my body didn't feel right." That's how we felt after watching this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406728/

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