Dungeons And Dragons

by CHRISTOPHER TOOKEY, Daily Mail

Inspired, though that's hardly the word, by the role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons is a stupidly scripted, wretchedly acted apology for a children's film that rips off a dozen other movies - most blatantly, Star Wars - without a tenth of their competence.

Jeremy Irons chews the carpet and leaves toothmarks all over the furniture, not to mention his wooden fellow actors, as the villainous wizard Profian, who plots to take over the kingdom of a princess (Thora Birch) whose only allies are two annoying thieves, a nubile teenage wizard, a redbearded dwarf and a handful of elves (one is Tom Baker with false ears and an instruction to keep sitting, so that we can't spot he's well over 6ft).

Spouting dialogue of preposterous inanity (my favourite was the cry 'Now is the hour to act!' which brought mutters of agreement from this particular critic), Irons succeeds in sabotaging further a once glittering career that seemed to have reached an all-time low with Lolita.

Not-so-special-effects vary from the inept to the downright laughable, and budgetary constraints mean that the final showdown between dragons and humans never really materialises, though Irons is carried off cackling and is summarily eaten, in a draconian but fundamentally fair act of dramatic criticism.

The whole thing stands as a terrible warning of how the forthcoming movie of The Lord Of The Rings might turn out if absolutely everything goes wrong.

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