This was one of the most purely fun movies I’ve seen in a while.

I had an epic Labor Day weekend, y’all. Got two projects done around the house that needed doing. Read two and a half entire books. Took naps. And, wonder of wonders, last night my wife and I watched a movie.

This movie has been out for a while, and I’m far from convinced that my opinion matters at this point, but I think if you’ve ever played D&D in your life you probably owe it to yourself to give this a watch. If you never played D&D or are otherwise unfamiliar with the fantasy genre in general, I’m not sure how well it will hit with you– the interesting thing to me is that the harder the movie leaned into the Forgotten Realms setting, the less I liked it. For some reason, references to Baldur’s Gate kept tossing me out of the movie, and Elminster himself makes an appearance that just felt weirdly inappropriate. It’s rare that I think something should have been more generic, but at least for me this movie could have been pulled out of the Realms and dropped into its own setting and I would have been fine with it.

That’s my only complaint, though. Everything else I have to say is positive. The cast is excellent across the board; I’ve never had any particular feelings about Chris Pine one way or another but he’s perfectly cast as a bard, and Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian character is a lot of fun as well. Everyone is really pretty and I feel like the director had a goal with the cast to push back a little bit on the idea that fantasy fiction has to be white– there are a ton of racially-ambiguous brown people in this movie, and Pine’s Ed is in an interracial marriage, and their daughter Kira, played by Chloe Coleman, is freaking adorable. Hugh Grant is perfectly cast as a slimy con man, the villain is creepy as fuck, and in general the group dynamics make you feel like everyone had a lot of fun making this movie. The movie isn’t precisely a comedy but where it’s funny it’s funny, and the action sequences were genuinely awesome. There’s a bit at about the 1/3 mark where Rodriguez’ Holga character wins a fight with a paving stone she pries out of the road at her feet, and her fights are always full of improvised weaponry and creativity. They’re amazing, and there’s never any question about what’s going on. I wasn’t expecting action this well-shot from this movie, and it was great to see. Bigger action directors should learn from it, honestly.

Plus? Owlbears. Gelatinous Cubes. Freakin’ displacer beasts. A fat dragon. If they’d found a place to stuff a Hook Horror into the movie they’d have hit nearly all of my favorite D&D monsters. If you thought for even a minute that you might enjoy this, give it a watch while it’s on Netflix. Thumbs way up.