THE DUNGEON MASTERS - On DemandAugust 12, 2010
FilmBuff
On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: The Dungeon Masters. Find the D&D in you and tell Sean what you think here.
The joke never gets old. Grownups dressing themselves as fantasy characters and taking it really seriously. For comedians and the public at large, role players (as we call them) are so easy to poke fun at you don’t have to try. You point the camera at them and let them be themselves. That’s it. (Add “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” to the mix and it’s the funniest skit of the year.)
Who are these nuts and how can they consider dressing as a Vegas magician with Spock ears and elf boots a central goal in life? Can you imagine being so utterly nerdy?
I can. I once put on full Gene Simmons make-up one day in high school just for the heck of it and walked around town like it was normal. I had a D&D group up until my late 20’s run by someone I refer to as “the best DM I know.” Halloween is my favorite occasion because of the costumes. And I went out of my way to ask for this film not to review it, but just to watch it.
In case you’re thinking I’m so biased I would love it no matter what, think again. I was also ready to trash it. Sure, I’d be moderately entertained the same way perusing Comic-con photo galleries keeps my attention. But I didn’t expect a good movie. I expected this to be a point-and-laugh sort of affair. That’s not what I got.
It begins as you might expect; by giving general audiences something to chuckle at: nerds aplenty unfurling their shiny capes, proclaiming their character’s intentions in pseudo old-English vernacular. Egomaniacal masters of their domains threatening to dispatch their players like some vengeful deity. Devotees sweating under layers of dark blue make-up. From the start, we’re treated to cringingly self-unaware individuals afflicted with the same odd but generally amusing way to creatively deal with (or avoid) reality.
The film trains its sights on three individuals – Scott, a wanna-be novelist and Kevin Smith doppleganger (the child molester next door look), Elizabeth, a plain young woman with man issues who dons full wig and body make-up to resemble a Drow Elf (actually my favorite of all races in the D&D books – google it), and Richard, a gaming ham who at first sort of reminded me of a chubby, flamboyant regional theater director. All three are dungeon masters.
*A dungeon master is someone who presides over a role playing campaign (the ongoing game) as architect of the world and its “story.” They are a player in the game but control the dice, which determine everything from successful spells to amounts of damage inflicted upon characters during a melee (a fight). Simply, they are the god (or “intelligent designer”) of the world.
Framed in five acts displayed as Tolkeinesque chapters, THE DUNGEON MASTERS spans a year between two GenCons (a popular gaming convention) during which Keven McAlester (the dungeon master of this film) focuses his energies on peeling away the layers of his three subjects like a Le Guin novel. The result is as unexpected as the outcome of the roll of a 20-sided die. Under each be-wigged exterior is a complicated individual not only with different gaming styles (Scott’s a storyteller, Elizabeth’s super creative, Richard plays to the back rows) but each with serious reasons to value gaming.
Suddenly, Richard’s not a buffoon; with each twist, his life gets more interesting than most people you know. Scott, financially stranded on the river Styx, married to an emasculating woman (but with a great kid) finds himself on the verge of his life’s dream. And Elizabeth’s man issues, once explained, are no laughing matter. We root firmly for all of them. They become very real -- even when LARP-ing. (LARP = “Live Action Role Playing” like in the movie ROLE MODELS. If you haven’t seen that, keep an eye out for LORDS OF BADASSDOM, co-starring my favorite socially awkward / ass-kicking genius - actress Summer Glau!)
Like Mark Barrowcliffe’s memoir The Elfish Gene there is a mixture of game play and character introspection, with a serious focus on the realities of pain. For every failed supervillain gag there is the anxiety of an abusive boss. For every “sphere of annihilation” there is the melancholy of reuniting with a long lost biological son. The trajectory of the film is a relief as the joke is no longer on the subjects.
Their hopes, dreams and plights start to resemble our own and in a way, most satisfyingly, though we come to respect the talent and energy it takes to be a Dungeon Master, we realize that despite all the imagination these people put into their role playing, none of the stories they conjure in pointy wizard hats could possibly be as interesting as the stories of their real, cubicle-dwelling lives – and maybe that goes for us too. As a wise gamer somewhere once said, “Life is gaming is life.”
Roll your saving throw on demand now!
- Sean McPhillps
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Sean McPhillips is a contributing writer to On Demand Weekly. He is a former VP, Acquisitions for Miramax Films and currently writes/directs for NY-based Secret Hideout Films. He works as programmer for the Furman Film Series and has become Sr. Programmer, Festival Director for the inaugural Gold Coast International Film Festival (debuts in June, 2011).
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