In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale Review

As much as I love a good cinematic escape, I'm often too busy helping you, the little people, to stay current with today's movies. Occasionally some slip through the cracks, disappearing like Freddie Prinze Junior's career, never to be heard of again. But since I'm still recovering from my all night dodgeball, vodka, and roofies party, I decided to delve into the past and flop onto my couch, watch an older video, and silently curse my own name, ancestors, and pets. As fate would have it, I stumbled upon In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, a fantasy movie based on a video game that I had enjoyed a few years back. That's right, ladies, I love fantasy movies AND I play video games. Try to contain yourselves and just form a line right here. That's good.

Given the eye-raping I have just endured, I would be remiss in my duties (whatever they may be) if I didn't share my experience with you. You need to hear about this film, not because it's a national treasure, but because if we as a nation ever run out of nuclear bombs, we can drop these DVDs on our enemies and wait for them to run screaming into the nearest power lines.

I had heard of director Uwe Boll's reputation for making crappy movies. But since I had enjoyed the game, and apparently since I'm a huge tool, I figured to give it the benefit of the doubt. How bad could it be, right? I'll tell you exactly how bad it can be. If I were given the choice between watching King again or a slow death swarmed by flaming killer bees, while being beaten by midgets with iron rods wrapped in barbed wire soaked in Tabasco sauce and lemon juice, I'd be all "Wooo, bring on the bees!" Allow me to break the experience down for you.

Cinematography: Imagine going to your director of photography and saying, "Please find the lowest-grade film you can possibly manage to use, preferably something made out of bark and hand-crafted by Aborigines. Oh, and please use that newfangled shaky-cam style during all the action so no one can tell what's going on. And for our special effects, find those guys who did all those Roadrunner vs. Coyote cartoons, they were a hoot!" That's what King subjects your eyes to for two hours and five minutes. I mention the last five minutes, because it was during that time that I almost scraped out my optic nerves with a pencil.

Sound: It's no secret that some dialogue is lost while filming on location. Sometimes the microphones malfunction, or sometimes a line is rewritten and replaced. Usually the average movie-goer never spots the places where dialogue was replaced. Usually, this is because the dialogue was recorded with high-quality sound equipment, treated by professional sound technicians, and expertly edited by highly trained sound editors. And so it must've taken guts for Uwe Boll to spurn the conventional Hollywood sound process in favor of one a little more raw. It takes true boldness to allow replaced dialogue to sound like it was phoned in from an old telephone booth in Kosovo (the war-ravaged part). It takes real gumption to forget editing out the echoes from whatever studio/bomb shelter/AM radio station the lines were recorded in. Hats off to you, Mr. Boll. You're braver than I'll ever be.

Action: The evil wizard Gall-bladder or Panty-raid or Prophylactic or whatever his name is uses his most devastating spell in the final climactic battle with Jason Statham's character Farmer - a spell which flings some books from his library shelves. Earlier in the movie, he and the good wizard Nabisco have a battle royale using, you guessed it, swords. Yeah, all of the action made about that much sense, and builds as much suspense as two grannies fighting over the last danish at the retirement home brunch.

Acting/Characters: Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds, Leelee Sobieski, Ron Perlman, Matthew Lillard, Kristanna Loken, Claire Forlani, John Rhys-Davies, and Ray Liotta should all be put in a corner and forced to write "I will stab myself in the ear before acting for Uwe Boll again" one billion times before being allowed to re-enter human society. It was apparent that some of them realized the drivel they were spouting; some even managed to look embarrassed for their own characters.

Plot: Evil wizard with army of beast-servants challenges the blah-blah-blah-blibbidy-flibbidy-doo while average dude Farmer's hot wife is kidnapped, forcing him to rise up and squibbidy-hibbidy-doo-wop-ramalamadingdong.

In the end, I consider my great sacrifice to be a service to all of you. I have thrown myself on the grenade that is In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale so that you may save yourselves. Congratulations, director Uwe Boll. In your honor I'm going to buy a dog, name it after you, and kick it off a cliff.