The long awaited horror comedy, Knights of Badassdom, has had a tumultuous experience making it’s way to the screen. The wait for the film reaches back to 2011, where the film’s trailer premiered at that year’s Comic Con to a wildly enthusiastic response. Financial disputes and extensive re-edits from the producers prompted the delayed release of the film, frustrating its fan base and even it’s own director. After nearly three years of delays, Knights of Badassdom was finally released on Digital and On Demand earlier this month. While I may not have waited for as long as the rest of the fan base, I too eagerly awaited the film’s release. Sadly, the film’s flaws made that wait ultimately for nothing.
Knights of Badassdom tells the story of Joe (played by True Blood‘s Ryan Kwanten), a mechanic whose best friends, Eric and Hung (played by Steve Zahn and Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage respectively) bring him to a live action role-playing game (or LARP) to cheer him up after Joe is dumped by his girlfriend, Beth (Margarita Levieva). The game takes a blood soaked turn when they accidentally summon a real demon (also played by Margarita Levieva) that starts eating the other gamers. The group, joined by game master Ronnie (Jimmi Simpson), the sexy Gwen (Summer Glau) and her disturbed cousin Gunther (Brett Gipson), must band together and kill the demon before she devours everything in her path.
Director Joe Lynch has shunned the film and understandably so. The version that’s been released is not his cut of the film, but rather a version re-edited by the film’s financiers, possibly with the potential to try to give it a wider appeal past the LARPer crowd. Whether or not that is the case, I, like most if not all of the fan base, believe that this was a terrible idea. I don’t believe it needed a wider appeal to succeed, given that another film, Role Models, heavily featured LARPing and was still a critically and commercially successful film. That being said, Knights of Badassdom’s many faults can’t be placed on the extensive edits alone. While it’s hard to suggest where exactly Lynch’s fault lies in all this, it’s hard to deny that the film was riddled with problems from its very conception.
Let’s start with the positive. Lynch directed the film with an appropriately cheesy, yet nostalgic 80’s B-movie tone, not unlike its spiritual predecessor, Evil Dead. A scene that stands out in particular, features Lando (Community’s Danny Pudi in an extended cameo) hiding from the demon in a bathroom stall. Despite the fact that the film is not even close to scary, it’s the only scene that evokes any sort of tension at all.
The actors all do a good enough job with the lackluster material they were given (more on that in a minute). Ryan Kwanten does a decent job as an everyman thrown into the world of LARP. As his nerdy best friends, Steve Zahn and Peter Dinklage also do decent work, particularly Dinklage, who relishes his role with faux Shakespeare in the Park bafoonery. Jimmi Simpson, as Game Master Ronnie, is even sillier than Dinklage, yet never too over the top, something that could have easily happened. Summer Glau gives the film’s best performance, bringing sweetness as well as a nerdy, yet seductive charm, making it easy to see her as a love interest for Joe.
Unfortunately, none of the film’s better aspects can overcome its worst offense: Kevin Dreyfuss and Matt Wall’s lazy, disappointingly poor screenplay. This is one place where I must question Joe Lynch’s place in his film’s failings. While I understand that the final cut of the film was not his own or even made with his consent, the footage they had at their disposal was presumably filmed from a screenplay that’s so poorly written, it’s concerning that he even approved it at all. It honestly makes me wonder how much better Lynch’s cut would have been.
To be fair, I love the concept of the film itself. The idea of people pretending to be warriors and wizards then actually having to become them is what drew me to the film in the first place. What makes the script so frustrating is that it takes that concept and just throws it down on the page without any concern to make it interesting, funny or even have it make sense.
Multiple plot points are merely stated with no buildup or explanation. At one point, it’s stated that Eric is an accidental millionaire who lives in a fake castle, but the explanation as to how he came into that much money is never once explained. There’s also a subplot with a group of redneck douche bags that merely shows up now and again, but has virtually no narrative purpose whatsoever. Then, there’s Joe’s final battle with the demon, which is so startlingly random that I could barely believe it was put on film. The jokes, except for maybe a few gags, are stale and not well written. There’s a gold mine of potential humor in this premise, but Dreyfuss and Wall either don’t realize it, or don’t care too.
There’s also barely any attempt to give the characters any sort of arc or depth, let alone the protagonist. At first, it seems like Joe’s journey is about him needing to find something else to do with his life other than work at a car repair shop and mooch off his rich friend, which would have at least introduced a flaw, something important to any character. Then, it appears that his arc is about him needing to get over his ex-girlfriend. It changes yet again to make his journey about him finding his courage. The script can’t stay on an arc long enough to make you care about Joe as a character. The script even tries to throw an arc on Eric’s character, but it feels more like a random afterthought than anything else. The most successful attempt at development goes to Gwen’s backstory with her cousin, Gunther and even that is adequate at best.
Another failure in the film comes in the form of its special effects. For a horror film, this can be considered just as bad, if not worse, then having a bland screenplay. The computer effects would barely be acceptable in a video game. The demon’s monstrous form during the climax looked disastrously silly, looking more like a Muppet than a terrifying beast. Even the gore was haphazardly thrown together, looking more like slabs of meat and some liquid rather than blood and guts. If a horror film can’t even get its gore to look good, something is very wrong indeed.
Knights of Badassdom is far from the worst film I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely disappointing to see such an intriguing concept executed so poorly and then butchered so cruelly.
That Film And TV Gay 