That said, Mazes and Monsters is representative of the very begining of idiots dislike of gaming. Before violence was being blamed on Street Fighter, before kids blew up their teachers because they saw it on Full House (try writing to some loonies about this occurence and let's see if we can get someone to raise a campaign against Full House, or at the very least the Olsen twins), Christians had to find something fun to hate. Dancing was no longer as easy to assail as it used to be, and rock music clearly wasn't getting the message, so they started in on gaming.

But try as they might they couldn't find any satanic symbolism in Pong. Nor did there seem to be a lot of encouragements to sacrifice infants to Bhaal in Atari games, except for ET, but noone bought that one anyhow. Finally they settled on D&D, which by now you all know I'm fond of. The disappearance of a gay guy who played the game as well as doing and manufacturing drugs set off a huge D&D scare. They thought it was more likely that the game killed him then that he was killed due to drugs or that his nutty ass ran off and/or committed suicide (which was what happened and what happened after they found him, respectively)

As if this hadn't been sensationalized enough by the media and concerned parents groups a wonderful authoress (and mutant freak pictured below) Rona Jaffe made it into a book which some other mutant freaks made into a movie. But they knew they'd need a non-mutant freak if anyone was going to watch the shit they spewed out, so they drafted a young and naieve boy named Tom Hanks into their war on anything remotely interesting.

"I eat babies"

I think it's necessary to provide a color coded plot summary of this film. Stolen material will appear in red with notes, material that was poorly researched or horribly unrealistic will appear in blue, and material that makes no damned sense will appear in green.

We start off with some very non-typical college kids. One of them is the son of entirely TOO normal parents(Hanks) one of them wears a different hat in every scene and his mother rearranges his room constantly, one of them is a jock, and one of them is what passed for a hot chick in 1982. Needless to say, jocks and girls generally don't play D&D, and the deranged are usually too busy making blankets out of human flesh, but we'll let that go.

The three not too insane ones are looking around for another player who can play on the ninth level (They seem to believe that level nine is the epic level of DND whereas it's actually level 12 where you start to become something special, and you don't become epic until level 20) They all moan about how they need a ninth level player and it's all very lame and theatrical. They find Tom hanks' character who's name is Robby and he grudgingly agrees to join them.

He brings along his cleric who's name is Pardieu (which is actually just the french exclamation "By god" which anyone who's read a Dumas novel would know) They play their silly demi-game on a drawing of... something laden with candles. No books. No DM screen. NO EFFING DICE. Not one drop of soda or other sustenance.

The game goes basically like this: "Will you enter the dungeon? Yes. Ok you're in the dungeon and there's a hole. I jump in. You die." That's a pretty faithful quoting of the actual lines from the game they play. There is no role to see if he died but then it gets worse as the Dungeon Controller chides the hat geek for not "Using his sonar" I've played a lot of D&D games and variations. There was one where the point of the game was to touch your bathing suit area while an old man filmed you. I thought it strange but chalked it down to the weird rules of Forgotten Realms. But here's something I know for sure. If your DM ever tries to push some freakish Dolphin Human hybrid on you that uses Sonar, you need to get out of that campaign, and fast!

So anyhow, they ask Pardieu to ressurect him, but Pardieu "dosn't have enough spell points" Anyhow the plot moves. Robby falls in love with eighties hot chick and they become an item. But hat-geek likes her too and is now sad, so he decides to kill himself. But he wants to kill himself in a way that everyone will remember, so he decides to kill himself... IN A CAVE!!!

And not just any cave, Pequod caverns. This place is so forbidden that you can be expelled from the university for going there. Yeah apparently that works somehow. The cave thing is meant to create suspense and danger in the film, but it fails. Then again this is a movie about TTRPGs so noone expected it to be suspensful and dangerous. Even if it had Michelle Pfeiffer.

So there's signs and everything pointing to the stupid forbidden cave. But luckily it's well guarded... by four boards that aren't even nailed down. So he goes in, and then decides that instead of killing himself he wants to play Mazes and Monsters. After this epiphany he dosnt seem to have any further problems. He brings his entire gang there in stupid costumes he stole. The girl whines about how they'll get expelled and then, as is apparently the traditional way to start a game, he asks if they shall enter the dungeon and they say aye.

They basically run around the cave like fucking idiots for a while with the girl screaming at stuff until finally Robby cracks his nut. He starts hallucinating for no reason, which isn't all that common in D&D, but then neither is spelunking. Things start getting fun after this point. Robby, in short order, goes totally mental. He breaks it off with his girlfriend, has a vision of his dead brother in what is quite clearly a large drainage pipe, and then supposedly sells off all his posessions, even though all his stuff is still there when his friends raid his room.

Special effects be Hal's plumbing.

Views into human madness can often be poignant moments that creep us out to the basic level of "There but for the grace of God go I" Not this one though. Robby tromps to New York to find the Two Towers because he believes his dead brother told him to. He calls his brother "The Great Hall." Apparently his name was Hall. It becomes clear that his emotional problems have a lot to do with his parents being farkwads who let architects name their kids. His sister's name is Parlor.

Anyhow, he next has a run in with two stereotypical eighties creatures. The first one is a crazy old man, much like the crazy old men that appear in Back To The Future or Christine(soon to be reviewed) or God knows how many other eighties films. The guy claims to be king of France and Robby bows to him and asks about a dragon. The moment is probably as painful for the viewer as it is for the two actors involved and it drags on for a while.

Next, to everyone's shock, he's mugged by some eighties street punks in a misty alley. They wear tight leather so they've got to either be street punks or homosexuals, but judging by their looks I'm leaning to the latter conclusion. Robby tries to cast a spell with a rock somehow, but failing that he just stabs one of them, even though clerics can't use bladed weapons. Supposedly it's because he thought he was a Gorvil (the word the film makers used for Orc so they wouldn't get sued) But it could also just be Tom Hanks showing that he's tough on crime. He starts whimpering after this and instead of confessing to a volleyball he confesses to something with less acting skills; the girl.

She leads her friends to New York to find him, but he's already wandered off with a bloody knife in his hand. They know he's going to the Two Towers but the idiots can't seem to figure out what this could possibly refer to. Finally they make the connection and chase him around. They find him about to jump but after their Dungeon Controller convinces him that he dosn't have enough "spell points" to "fly" (which clerics can't do anyhow, assface.) he starts crying again as shown below and they all hug.

"I can't believe I agreed to be in this film!"

You think the pain has ended, but they reunite later at Robby's house. His mom dosnt even try to accuse them of being the reasons her kid went nuts, probably because she knows they're not. She rambles on about how delicate he was and how he's been in therapy (which hasn't been working obviously) and then they see him. He jabbers about self renewing coins, claiming his parents are inn keepers, and then he says they should go kill some monsters. The film ends on that note. No morals, no closure, just a mentally unstable Tom Hanks and his friends running around in the woods with him. Oh, and there's a terrible eighties song about friends. Let's examine cover accuracy.

It's telling that Hanks' name is above that of the movie. Also that's an adult Tom Hanks. This is horribly misleading. This movie contains no fortresses, no flying demons, no mazes, and none of Tom Hanks' acting abilities. One thing I learned from the cover art search was that this film was sold in Soviet Russia. Yeah, no wonder they kept their finger on the red button. The funny thing is how Hanks' name translates. Tom Hanks in Russian is Tom X3HKC. Yeah..