I really, really, wanted this to be good, and while it wasn't terrible, it didn't deliver in the way that I think many had hoped it would. It may be a fairly controversial opinion but I loved the first D&D movie that was ever made, at least the first half of it, and I wanted this to fall in that same vein of movie. While the movie stuck to the fantasy, action, comedy genre I never felt like the jokes hit hard enough for me to really enjoy the film.
While I was impressed with the amount of actual D&D mechanics they threw into the film, I think it made it a little harder to really follow the story. The biggest issue that I had with the film was that it seemed to have to much detail crammed into to short of a time frame. The story seemed to suffer as a result of not having enough time to truly develop any character arc or relationship; the movie relied on every classic trope it could use to fill the gaps in a very rushed setting. The end result of it left me with the feeling that it was like a game of D&D, but not in a good way; the characters seemed to just be thrown together, the story seemed jumpy and rushed, the big bad was hokey and anticlimactic, and it failed to convey the fantasy setting it should have.
While I was impressed with the amount of actual D&D mechanics they threw into the film, I think it made it a little harder to really follow the story. The biggest issue that I had with the film was that it seemed to have to much detail crammed into to short of a time frame. The story seemed to suffer as a result of not having enough time to truly develop any character arc or relationship; the movie relied on every classic trope it could use to fill the gaps in a very rushed setting. The end result of it left me with the feeling that it was like a game of D&D, but not in a good way; the characters seemed to just be thrown together, the story seemed jumpy and rushed, the big bad was hokey and anticlimactic, and it failed to convey the fantasy setting it should have.