I have to escape from the deluge of friends who are well-meaning but try to play armchair epidemiologist on Facebook. Sometimes I re-watch The Sopranos or The Wire or The Godfather- and then realizing that I have kind of a one-note movie watching style, I’ll switch it up and watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire – which is Amazing, by the way.
My need for connection with folks in the midst of not seeing them leads me to having online hangouts. You can use Zoom or Google Meet or whatever you have available to you. My friend and I used Discord because it allows for simultaneous screen sharing where you can also hear the audio (not available on Zoom unless you do some trickery).
And out of the pain that is also called Nostalgia, my friend fired up Dungeons and Dragons from the year 2000. Let’s use some similes to describe it: This is like they took a Zena episode and made it one hour and 45 minutes and also included Marlon Wayans. This is like they went into the past, cloned Shia LaBeouf, realized Justin Long existed back then, then couldn’t afford him so they went with Justin Whalin instead.
The acting is terrible. The CG is terrible. The plot is very convoluted, but to be fair I fell asleep at multiple points in the movie because I had been consuming the deadly combination of Oreos and drinking Sierra Nevada IPA.
What is kind of impressive is that this movie came out before Lord of the Rings. (My hot take is that LOTR is okay but it doesn’t really hold up when you’re actually watching it. It’s too long and cumbersome.)
In any case, I kind of half way watched it. Don’t make that mistake. Just all-the-way don’t watch it.
Dungeons and Dragons gets the D+ grade from me just because I kind of liked the supporting actresses and Thora Birch deserved better.
Cyborg Astronaut Dog 