Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves movie review

Scratched the itch I didn’t know I had

Official movie poster; no copyright infringement intended.

April 16, 2025

Categorization: Fantasy

Where watched: On Netflix

I know this movie came out a couple of years ago, but I only watched it when it came out on Netflix recently. To be honest, I was not dying to watch it? I think video (cinema and TV) is the last medium to really get Fantasy right. With some notable exceptions (Lord of the Rings), there are just so many examples of blockbuster-minded folks trying to squeeze every last drop of content out of an IP (The Hobbit, Harry Potter), or there are some (how do I put this kindly) mediocrity-inclined folks who think they can improve on the works of people much smarter and more creative than they are (second season of Shadow and Bone, Game of Thrones).

It’s a hard world out there for a purist, I’ll give you that.

So when you have these people who made Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves who have not taken any book as their screenplay-bible and have the audacity to just make up a story in a famous world and just run with it… I was skeptical.

But looking back now, I realize that I am the idiot. Obviously, Dungeons and Dragons is to most people just a world, and the whole point of this world is that anyone can make up stories set in them. From this premise, it should not have come as a surprise that Honor Among Thieves was as good as it was.

I think my problem is that I never played the D&D board game (I was never invited?), and my introduction to D&D came in the form of reading R.A. Salvatore’s excellent Drizzt series (I think it’s called Tales of the Underdark). So for me D&D will always be, forevermore, where Drizzt and his pals live.

So anyway, I intend for this to be an absolute no-spoiler review, and I will just say here that Honor Among Thieves was great fun! It was funny, enjoyable, did not take itself too seriously, and the famous actors in it have such fun and surprising roles... ughhh there is one cameo I really want to talk about! I was thrilled and fell over myself laughing! You will know which part when you watch it.

But aside from that, it was for the Fantasy lover, a self-indulgent foray into the D&D universe. I mean, as a verrrryyy light spoiler, there may or may not have been a sidequest into the Underdark, which thrilled me to no end, and the imagining of the Underdark was as good, if not better, than how I imagined it to be when I read the Drizzt series.

And having played Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 only a couple years back, I was truly gratified to be able to have a very amusing look at a Paladin, who was just like how I imagined my uppity Paladin character in the games to be! He eventually deserted me (that asshole) when I needed him most, but we had a bunch of memorable adventures together! These many small and snarky references were a big part of what made the movie so much fun to watch. The feeling of watching it is the same as the feeling of playing Baldur’s Gate, and I think that is absolutely the highest compliment I can give any Fantasy on video. The clever dialogue and humor are the same and the characters are familiar, and you basically feel like you are having a fun romp through a forest and a pack of elves, just getting the job done. Just like how playing Baldur's Gate 1, 2, and 3 feels like.

I was saddened to hear that Honor Among Thieves didn’t do so well at the box office (was everyone just a great big old cynic like me? for shame), as that likely means that there won’t be another one for some time. I think there was a failure of marketing somewhere, to be honest, plus it was post-pandemic. But, just in case someone from D&D is reading this, I hope you will not be discouraged by Honor Among Thieves’ lack of monetary success. The movie was a great example of Fantasy done right, and hopefully, it will beat a path for Fantasy moviemakers and TV series makers to follow; not to mention, it will increase the value of the D&D IP as a whole, as it will undoubtedly earn the D&D universe some more fans who will want to explore that universe through all the other media available.