text: Dead Gentlemen Productions has put together a film with amazing production values considering their budget. Anyone that has ever played any role-playing game, particularly any fantasy RPG (they play Dungeons and Dragons in the movie) will LOVE this movie. Brilliant performances all around--especially with regards to the dual nature of the principles, playing their players and their characters. Anyone who has ever filmed or acted in a student film will appreciate the amount of work and love they put into this project. This movie (and its prequel) is to fantasy movies and role-playing games what Blazing Saddles is to westerns--parody of the highest order. I only have a couple minor complaints about the movie itself, none of which will prevent me from buying the DVD as soon as it's available (only 6 more weeks--I'm counting the days): <br /><br />1. When Lodge is talking to Joanna about joining the gaming group, he hands her a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook and says "this will tell you everything you need to know." The camera hovers too long on a shot of the book, and the moment really seemed like a commercial.<br /><br />2. The jokes are hilarious, but they seem unevenly spread throughout the movie. The last third of the movie, after the almost continuous barrage of visual and verbal humor preceding it, slows down a bit, as if the narrative was catching up with the jokes. Odd, but Blazing Saddles always struck me that way as well. . . and I love that movie, too.<br /><br />One of the narrative strengths of the story is the unresolved nature of the romantic subplot. Will Joanna become the GM's girlfriend? Will she go back to Cass? Or will the three maintain a platonic friendship, deepened by the camaraderie of role-playing? (Yes that sounds sappy, but there are a couple of saccharine moments, particularly when Cass and Lodge "make up" at the end.) But the movie spans one week: in terms of human relationships, those questions could not be answered in a week. The fact that the characters' relationships are left undefined strikes me as better than the more classical choices you see in most movies, like the girl gets her prince and they move into the castle, or the prince sinks into the North Atlantic after three trite, tedious, and predictable hours. The writers really seem to have a grasp of the psychology of the characters, and you can see the characters (both the gamers and the player's characters) change over the course of the movie, but not suddenly, and not unbelievably. <br /><br />I would love to hear more wisdom from Brother Silence. "The man who stands out in darkness is. . . fluorescent."