Movie Review: Mazes and Monsters

Here's a fun thing about blogging, to those of you who don't blog: there's a setting where you can schedule a post to go live way in the future. I've done it a whole bunch of times (typically the Trailer Tuesday posts) and you probably have never noticed. Yes, I'm shattering the illusion. Call me the Penn and Teller of blogging! Your favorite blogger who wrote that post about putting yogurt on your face while you sleep? That was written WEEKS before it went live! That blogger was out swimming in a cave as the post went up! And you thought the person got up at 3AM, wrote a post, and hit publish. Nope!!

I'm mentioning this because I'm setting this post to go live RIGHT as I arrive at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis to start my Gen Con adventure! This post is going to be the start of my gaming adventure and while you're at home reading it, I'm sweating my ass off in Indiana heat, possibly listening to Local H and drinking a beer, ready to start 4 days of gaming! Woo! Take that, time travel!

Anyway, I wanted to somehow celebrate all things board games by watching a movie that's been in my collection for a few years now. I remember hearing about it and I finally saw it in a used DVD store and it was only 4.99 so I said why the fuck not? Let's talk about the Tom Hanks Dungeon's and Dragon's movie Mazes and Monsters!

Mazes and Monsters was a made-for-TV movie that came on CBS back in like 1982. It came out while Dungeon's and Dragons was getting popular and overprotective parents and watchdog groups said it was EVIL!! EVIL!!! So this played out as a "warning", which is hilarious watching this from a 2018 perspective.

We meet our four main characters: Jay Jay who's a super smart 16-year-old who managed to immediately get accepted at a college, Kate a woman who can't hold onto relationships and has daddy issues (you don't say?), Daniel the bland one of the group who just wants to be a video game designer but his rich parents want him to...not be a video game designer, and finally Robbie, Tom Hanks' character, who also has annoying parents and want him to focus on school and not play "that silly game".

That silly game is indeed called Mazes and Monsters because Dungeon's and Dragons was copyrighted!  If you know D&D (I got tired of spelling it out, you know what I mean when I say D&D) then you'll more or less know this game. It's a roleplaying fantasy game where you take on characters like "holyman", and there's a "maze creator" who runs the game. And you have to talk in flowery talk. I guess.

You can tell they're not real gamers because real gamers wouldn't PUT CANDLES ON THE GAMEBOARD!

I'm gonna be honest here: I've never played D&D. Despite me having an imagination for days, something about this just makes me not want to play it. I'm not opposed to it but I can't see myself enjoying it. So I don't know how close this Mazes and Monsters game was to D&D. Do you need 4 people to play D&D?

Because that's how Jay Jay, Daniel, and Kate meet Robbie. Robbie promised his parents he'd never play again but because they needed a 4th player, they convince him to play and he gives in and finally does.

Eventually, a romance blossoms between Kate and Robbie, which depresses Jay Jay for some reason. Even though he never expressed any interest in her, he gets super bummed and decides, right then and there, to FUCKING KILL HIMSELF! And he's all nonchalant about it, like "Oh well, time to kill myself. I know! I'll do it in these dangerous abandoned caves nearby!"

So Jay Jay goes to the caves and instead of killing himself, he gets the idea to play M&M (got tired of typing that too but now it's making me think of the candies) IN THE CAVE! Eventually, everyone goes along with this and they sneak into the caves one night and they less play a game and more do some LARPing.

If you don't know what LARPing is, it stands for Live Action Role Playing, where instead of playing at a table, you actually act the shit out. Go watch that movie Role Models, it heavily featured LARPing. So Jay Jay hides in a spot in the cave and is the "cave creator" while the others run around this cave, talking all flowery, doing "quests".

Robbie gets separated and starts hallucinating that a monster is there and he kills it. Everyone thinks he was just getting super into the game but something inside Robbie snaps and he now THINKS HE'S ACTUALLY THE M&M CHARACTER!

Yeah, I knew the M&M thing would cause confusion.

Anyway, since his character was the "holy man", he takes it to the next level and declares himself celibate and breaks up with Kate. Again, men problems. And not to slut shame or anything but the next scene in the movie, she's tongue boxing Daniel, despite his borning-ness. Thankfully, Jay Jay wasn't nearby or he would've just hung himself right then and there.

One of Robbie's backstory thing was he had a brother named Hall (Jesus that's a terrible name, I thought I was bad at coming up with character's names but god...) who ran away from home and went missing. So now he's hallucinating that his "holy" character has to find "The Great Hall" and go to "The Two Towers" and his quest will be over. So Robbie goes missing.

Jay Jay, Daniel, and Kate figure out that Robbie went crazy and thinks he's his character and tells the police that he went missing. The police are quick to blame M&M-

Again, no.

And there's a whole thing about how playing this game is dangerous! If your precious Johnny is in in the basement, talking about natural 20's, he's talking a demon!! With nice tits!! BEWARE, MOM AND DAD!! BEWARE!

Anyway, the cops can't find Robbie and things slow down for a bit until it's revealed that he's roaming the streets of New York City, in a daze. Some street punks find him and try to mug him but he views them as giant dragons and manages to stab them, nearly killing a guy. This snaps Robbie out of it temporarily, where he calls Kate and tells him he's in NYC and he killed a guy. She tells him to go to Jay Jay's house and meet them there.

While on the way, Robbie goes crazy again and starts running around the sewer, bumping into a homeless guy who Robbie takes as a fellow M&M player. The homeless guy kinda fucks around with Robbie until he mentioned The Two Towers and tells him how to get there.

Of course, this ends up being:

Too soon!

And I almost suspect some guerrilla film making here, as I think they didn't actually have permits to film in and around the building. The people in the building seemed genuinely confused at the sight of three teenagers running around. Yeah, Jay Jay, Kate, and Daniel figure out Robbie is going there and chase him through the building (How they knew WHICH building is a mystery) and they find him on the roof. Man, you'd think after that whole Man on Wire thing, roof access would be hard to get to. Robbie is about to throw himself off when Jay Jay takes control and "maze controller" and tells him he can't and it's only a game. Hearing that this is only a game snaps Robbie out of it again and we get some quality acting from 1982 Tom Hanks. Clearly, someone agrees with me cause this scene is on YouTube.


Remember, that guy would go on to win TWO Oscars!

Three months later, Jay Jay, Kate, and Daniel go visit Robbie at home, thinking he's all better now but NOPE! He still thinks he's his character and wants to go on one final quest through the woods behind his home. And of course, when a mentally ill person thinks he's someone else and wants to take you through a dangerous place, you obviously play along and go with him. And with that, our cautionary tale ends.

I couldn't find a way to put it into the review but a special quirk Jay Jay had was he liked to wear hats throughout the movie. I don't mean like baseball hats or fedoras, although oddly enough he's rocking a fedora when he finds out Kate and Robbie are dating and he goes on his whole "nice guys never win!" rant. But he wears...random hats.

Eventually, he stops wearing them and I almost forgot about it until I remembered the fact he wore a hard hat with a tuxedo. I think I now have my Halloween costume!

Anyway, the movie sucked. The acting was terrible and the "message" was laughable. It's worth it to see Tom Hank's in an early role but that's about it.

But remember, if you play D&D, you will snap mid-way through and think you're a dwarf named Warrnec who can make fairies appear out of thin-air and you'll find yourself in a big city, stabbing street punks who look like dragons and try to jump off of tall buildings that will eventually become terrorist targets!

I used to have a rating system set in ye olden days but I'm gonna change it up with each review I do. So I'm gonna give this both Oscars Tom Hanks won. I don't regret watching it and it's fun to make fun of but I wasn't completely miserable while watching it.

-Jason