Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Paramount Pictures (2023)
I've always liked the idea of Dungeons & Dragons, but I've never had enough friends at the same time who were into this sort of thing to ever play a game. It's probably for the best because I'm not much of a people-person, but I've always enjoyed entertainment adjacent to the world of the tabletop RPG, including the Saturday morning cartoon series, the movies, and the various types of video games which have been released over the years.
With the exception of the cartoon series, which is present as an Easter Egg in the background of several scenes, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves may be my favorite piece of entertainment that takes place in this universe. I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about the source material to know if it sticks close to the game or takes a lot of creative liberties, but I do know that it told a solid story with more than a few laugh-out-loud moments (especially from Hugh Grant and Justice Smith), and I had fun watching it.
Seeing these two movies so close together made me wonder what a crossover would look like. I don't specifically mean a crossover of the characters in these two films, but imagine a movie where a half dozen mobsters from a mafia comedy flick were to find themselves transported into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd buy a ticket.
We had a lot of fun at last month's Monday Mystery Movie, so we decided to go again. This time, the secret movie was Mafia Mamma, which is scheduled to premier in theaters across the country on April 14th. It's blends elements of a women's empowerment action film like Ocean 8 or The 355 with romantic comedy and fish-out-of-water plot points set to the backdrop of Calabria, which happens to be the part of Italy that my ancestors came from.
Before you go to see this movie, you should probably set aside any sense of realism that you may be expecting. This isn't The Godfather or Goodfellas... this is a slapstick romantic comedy. There's a surprising amount of gore involved, but it's done for laughs, not for drama. If you can accept this movie for what it is, you'll have a hell of a lot of fun with it. If you go into it with the attitude of critiquing how accurately it presents the mob or with an axe to grind about Italian stereotypes in films, you're only going to make yourself miserable. If you're a relaxed person who goes to the movies to have a good time, I think you'll enjoy this film, but if you've got a stick up your ass about something or other, you should probably go see something else.
Seeing these two movies so close together made me wonder what a crossover would look like. I don't specifically mean a crossover of the characters in these two films, but imagine a movie where a half dozen mobsters from a mafia comedy flick were to find themselves transported into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd buy a ticket.
