An acclaimed fantasy heist film whose MVP is a ‘Bridgerton’ legend rolls with advantage on streaming

One of the quieter injustices of the 2023 cinema season was the poor returns of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, seeing just a $208.2 million haul against its $150 million budget. There are worse number out there, but this was a film that deserved better, particularly if its rejection of blockbuster convention proves to be an omen of any future stories set in the Forgotten Realms.

And there could very well be future stories. Paramount Pictures is reportedly open to a sequel on the condition of a smaller production budget, while a planned television spinoff — which has since been abandoned by Paramount Plus and is being creatively retooled by Hasbro Entertainment — will be seeking buyers at some point. For now, though, it’s just Chris Pine’s sword-and-sorcery antics, us viewers, and the Netflix library that’s delivering them to us.

Per Venom: The Last Dance in the top spot, but at least it’s being prioritized over Minions (seventh place).

The film stars Pine as Edgin Darvis, a bard, widow, and father to his daughter Kira. Kira winds up under the tutelage of Edgin’s friend Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) when Edgin and his friend Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) wind up in prison, but the pair eventually break out and go to reunite with Kira, only to realize that Forge, now king of Neverwinter, might not be as great of a friend as they initially thought. Quickly finding themselves as outlaws in a corrupted kingdom, Edgin and Holga round up a ragtag group of adventurers in hopes of rescuing Kira, battling a great evil, and maybe getting paid for their troubles at some point.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves‘ comedic core lies in its love for conversational irony. Whether it’s Holga’s shortsightedness (a trait that’s as hilarious as it is heartwrenching) or the himbo-coded oblivious of the gang’s overpowered ally Xenk Yendar (played by an unfairly perfect Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton fame), the film has a clear path to comedic victory, which makes it sting all the more whenever they veer off it — Chris Pine, for instance, is burdened with a few lines of dialogue that aren’t just unfunny, but ruin what would otherwise be a great gag.

Elsewhere, Edgin and Holga being best friends instead of lovers is one of the more powerful pivots from the blockbuster formula, but what’s truly refreshing is the way it makes good on the fact that this is a D&D movie — that is, the plot is structured in a way that seasoned D&D players will recognize as similar to that of a tabletop campaign.

Indeed, character backstories are explored as inorganically as they would be at the table (the self-important ing characters attempt to treat their lore with actual pathos, while protagonist Edgin knows better than that), and you can almost hear the Dungeon Master narrate the ins and outs of the encounters that occur from one scene to the next. It’s joyful work from writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley that has since had a steady flow of rightfully-earned streaming flowers blown its way.