What an unexpected blast! Even more unexpecting is this is currently at the favorite movie of the year, which probably won’t say much by the end of this year, but it speaks a lot of how much this movie really is.

I have never been big, or familiar, with “Dungeons & Dragons” except for the basics. For context, I did watch 2018’s “Game Night” to prepare before seeing this. Not only is it one of my all-time favorites, but it’s also director’s John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein’s previous directorial entry before directing this. That alone got me excited to see this. Luckily, I got to see this in IMAX was a buddy of mine amongst a moderately large crowd, which really made the experience a lot of fun.

The movie starts pretty quick and allows the audience enough time to understand these characters and motives. The humor is consistent, the blend of production design & CGI is really well done, and the characters were really well written. I can also see one of the director’s filmography traits is using one-takes, and the one they use in this is exhilarating.

My only real issue is that there is so much lore in this movie that whenever the movie did slow down, it felt like I would have to learn something new and figure out how that plays into the overall movie. I almost gave this a 4/5, but the ending almost brought to tears, so it ended up sticking with me a lot more.

I’d really recommend anyone to watch “Game Night” before this as it matches the exact same amount of energy and humor. I’d love to see a franchise built out of this as long as it can stay as fresh and exciting as this one. Please give John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein more movies that shouldn’t work that they can only make work.

VERDICT: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

On a side note, I never really realized how much Hugh Grant reminds me of Andy Bernard.