Movie Impression: Dudes & Dragons (formerly Dragon Warriors)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 7, 2016

This weekend, I watched Dudes & Dragons, formerly entitled Dragon Warriors, a locally-produced fantasy / comedy film project that I backed as a crowdfunder a long time ago. Their agreement with their distributor prohibited them from sending out the movies to backers before the film went public, which totally sucked from my perspective, but I can understand the rationale.

My TL;DR take: If you are fantasy fan, you’ll probably want to see this movie. It depends on your sense of humor. It is currently available on Amazon, and I think the DVD is available from Wal-Mart now, and it’s available digitally on iTunes.

Longer take: Starring James Marsters, Luke Perry (well, maybe not starring, but appearing), Adam Johnson, and Kaitlin Doubleday, this movie is a B-rated spoof of fantasy films and tropes. Evil Sorcerer Lord Tennsley (Marsters) has a crush on his beautiful cousin, Ennogard, and has kidnapped her until she agrees to marry him. Until then, he has seized control of a terrible dragon (the “Dolvernaug” or something like that – the pronunciation of its name is a running gag) and is using it to hunt down and destroy all young lovers in the kingdom.

A young lord named Camilan has fallen in love with an elf maiden, which incurs the wrath of both his parents and, if discovered, the dragon. To help him, he enlists the aid of his monster-hunting brother, Ramicus, who also receives a secret message from Ennogard begging for his aid. The plot is further complicated when Camilan’s fiance is critically injured by the dragon, requiring a talon from the beast to complete the spell to heal her. So the group sets forth to defeat the dragon, obtain its talon, and rescue Ennogard from Lord Tennsley.

Knowledge of pop culture helps to enjoy this film, as there are plenty of references scattered throughout… particularly from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Titanic. But it’s plenty of fun throughout. It is extremely heavy on the green-screen effects, and I thought the CGI monsters seemed to be purposefully intended to hearken back to the old Harryhousen-style stop-action monsters of an earlier era.

We were laughing out loud quite a bit during this movie, especially during the efforts to try and ‘bait’ the dragon. Ramicus’ roommate and sidekick, the orc Shoklar, stole the show much of the time. I’m not sure how he managed to emote under all that latex and make-up, but he was hilarious. Camilan’s servant, Samton (“Don’t call me Sam”) also gets plenty of opportunity to shine.

James Marsters gets to go over-the-top as the villain, which is a lot of fun.

The movie is relatively clean, although there are plenty of double entendres and suggestive humor. The violence is largely cartoonish, but there are some off-camera deaths that are pretty gruesome if you think about it, and the make-up injury effects are not for the youngest eyes. Some costumes are probably 50% costume tape. This film probably won’t pass the Bechdel test anytime soon, although it has a wonderful time skewering many manly sword & sorcery tropes. Bare-chested heroes, witches, damsels in distress, and knights in shining armor all get lampooned with little regard to political correctness. And the goblins… ew. The goblins…

Bottom line: It’s good. It’s funny. It’s cheap. It’s for fantasy fans. WIN!

 

 

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: Read the First Comment



top