Review: Knights of Badassdom

Wannabe ‘doom metal’ god Ryan Kwanten is struggling with a bad relationship breakup. His stoner pals Peter Dinklage (!) and Steve Zahn get him high, and before he knows it he is joining them in a LARP event (‘The Battle of Evermore’, of course). He’s never engaged in the activity before, but as a former top D&D player, his friends assure him he’ll be fine. Unfortunately, even the best of players will find it hard to survive when Zahn reads from a strange old spell book and inadvertently conjures up a Succubus-like demon that runs havoc amongst the gaming grounds. Summer Glau plays a ‘badass’ female LARP enthusiast, Jimmi Simpson plays Sheldon Cooper…I mean he plays the uber-serious games master who refuses to break character (i.e. Refuses to stop talking in fake old-timey speak), and W. Earl Brown plays an a-hole paintball redneck who tries to spoil their fun.

 

A 2013 horror-comedy about LARPing (Live-Action Role Playing) and heavy metal music that unfortunately seems to look down upon those who engage in the former, and is extremely inauthentic in representing the latter. It also hasn’t got a single laugh in the whole damn thing.

 

I’m especially surprised and disappointed that Peter Dinklage and Summer Glau would associate themselves with such derisive material, given they are both well-known figures in the sci-fi/fantasy/Comic-Con community. Hell, even Aussie Ryan Kwanten would fall into the same category for his work on “True Blood”, I guess. However,  I’ll lay a lot of my scorn at the feet of director Joe Lynch (“Wrong Turn 2: Dead End”) and his screenwriters Kevin Dreyfuss and Matt Wall, for creating such a feeble, lousy excuse for a film, which never seems to have as much affection for its characters as other films/TV shows about geeks like “The Big Bang Theory” (where the characters are stereotypes, but acquire depth throughout the series of course), “Revenge of the Nerds”, “Free Enterprise”, “Fanboys” etc. It’s that lack of sincerity that really offended me, and I’ve never even met anyone who engages in LARP, let alone engaged in it myself. Sure, the fake-arse English accents are accurate to LARP enthusiasts, but that gets insanely annoying after 10 minutes, and it all gets taken too far so as to make these characters look like tools, which I doubt is true to life (Jimmi Simpson’s character is especially guilty). How are we meant to care about these characters’ safety if they’re being sent up and made to look foolish and sad?

 

Meanwhile, I am a heavy metal fan, and I can honestly tell you that the only legit metal credentials this film has is in naming two of its characters King Kerry and King Diamond. It’s the one funny joke, and it’s in the end credits. There are references to ‘doom metal’, which I must confess I’ve never heard of (apparently it’s real, but it sounds like a made up term for generic guttural-vocals/crunching guitar Death Metal to me), but I can almost guarantee that the score/soundtrack by someone unfortunately named Bear McCreary is about as convincingly metal as Bon Freakin’ Jovi. The filmmakers miss a golden opportunity for some classic Ronnie James Dio, the late, great man used to sing about demons and kings, and wizards and dragons all the bloody time. What gives?

 

Steve Zahn is well-cast (and the only likeable presence in the film), but it’s particularly depressing to see the talented Peter Dinklage play a LARPing stoner idiot. Even more depressing? He’s the Executive Producer of this insulting piece of crap. Why didn’t he demand at least one amusing line of dialogue for himself? It’s a particularly bad idea to cast sci-fi TV actress Summer Glau in something like this. We all know she’s too cool to hang out with LARP fans, I mean she wouldn’t even have a bar of the “Big Bang Theory” guys when they tried to chat her up on the train. Here she looks like she’s being held at gunpoint to appear in this film. Mr. Kwanten looks bored out of his mind, too and is fatally miscast as a heavy metal fan. He looks ridiculous when trying to ‘rock out’ (Which he shouldn’t be doing anyway, because heavy metal fans don’t ‘rock out’. I’m not sure any self-respecting person does, to be honest. Punk-pop twits maybe).

 

Even if you don’t agree with me that the filmmakers are looking down on the characters (then why is most of the source of humour directed at them instead of with them?), it still looks and plays like a bad softcore flick from Seduction Cinema minus the sex…and any point in watching it. Apparently director Lynch has disowned the film, after the film got the “Magnificent Ambersons” treatment. And that’s the only time I’m gonna bring up you and Orson Welles in the same sentence, Mr. Lynch. Take it as a compliment. I can’t believe so many familiar faces (including veteran character actor W. Earl Brown) got roped into appearing in this shit. Definitely one of the worst films of 2013, I had a real lousy time with this one. Definitely not recommended to LARP enthusiasts…or anyone with a working brain. Maybe it works better if you’re drunk, I wouldn’t know, but I loathed this.

 

Rating: D