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Trailer—Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters

source: Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters

this is the best role tom hanks has ever taken and surprisingly, was his second. he has spent the rest of his career trying to recapture the severity and drama of this piece of art - philadelphia et. al come to mind - and he obviously robbed of the sci fi made for tv movie best lighting emmy. robbed! robbed i say!

I caught this movie at a small screening held by members of my college's gaming club. We were forewarned that this would be the "reefer madness" of gaming, and this movie more than delivered. Tom Hanks plays Robbie, a young man re-starting his college career after "resting" for a semester. What we, the viewer, find out as the movie progresses, is that Robbie was hopelessly addicted to a role-playing game called "Mazes and Monsters," a game that he gets re-acquainted with after a gaming group recruit him for a campaign. This movie is laughable on many, many levels. One scene features the group "gaming by candlelight," which is probably the best way I can describe it. While I'm sure that this was meant to be "cultish" in some way, as most gamers know, it's horribly inaccurate. Most role-play sessions are done in well-lit rooms, usually over some chee-tohs and a can of soda. The acting, while not Oscar-caliber, isn't gut-wrenchingly awful either. This is one of Tom Hanks's first roles, and Bosom Buddies and Bachelor Party were still a year or two over the horizon. The supporting cast, while not very memorable, still hand forth decent performances. Mainly the badness lies in the fact that it was a made-for-TV movie that shows the "dangers of gaming" Worth a view if you and your friends are planning a bad movie night.

While cinemtically well shot, this is a biased and bigoted drama which provided fodder for religious fundamentalists in their war against role-playing games. The premise of the movie is simple: three college students play a role-playing game called Mazes and Monsters, an all-too-obvious ripoff of Dungeons & Dragons. When the game thins, one of the members hits on the not-so-original idea of taking the game to the next level, by dressing up and doing it live. One of the players, who's less mentally balanced than the rest, stays "in-character" when the game is over. It's a simple schizophrenic mind-swap, and seems like Walter Mitty all over again. By following literary and character clues, his friends track the player (Tom Hanks) to New York City, and start looking for the Two Towers. In this post-9/11 world, the sight of the World Trade Towers being used in this story give it new meaning. The confrontation with Hanks' character, Robbie Wheeling, is a bit unnerving; a sign of Hanks' power, and a good hint of his future prowess in acting. Sadly, this movie and its story were cited as Gospel by foes of Dungeons & Dragons, and role-playing games in general. The story was reinvented and twisted several times by religious fundamentalists in their crusade against D&D's maker, TSR, and its later parent corporation, Wizards of the Coast. Given that D$D is nearing its 30th anniversary, such animosity can only be called bigotry. It's also ironic when you consider that more people are killed yearly in the name of religion, than have ever been in the name of Mazes and Monsters!

Somehow I missed this movie when it came out, and didn't see it until about twelve years later. I bought it based on the cover copy, which seemed to indicate a fun fantasy movie: D&D player ends up in a fantasy world. It never occurred to me that they meant "fantasy" literally. HOWEVER, a lot of people have been unfairly attacking this movie for years, claiming that it espouses the "dangers" of role-playing. FACT: Tom Hanks' character is established to have psychological problems from the beginning of the movie, including an inability to separate fantasy and reality. FACT: This psychologically unstable character is the only one to have this problem. FACT: The rest of the players use problem-solving skills they developed from role-playing to save his life. Far from showing the dangers of role-playing, I thought this movie did a good job of showing the kind of deductive and inductive reasoning that can be developed by using your imagination. I think it did at least as good a job of defending role-playing as it did attacking it.

I'm a longtime gamer and a lover of trash movies. I had heard of this film before, but not much about it. So, i took the plunge and rented Mazes and Monsters. I laughed 'til i nearly cried. many have commented upon the bad acting and low budget.. yes, it's bad, but i think that in at least the cases of Hanks and Makepeace the problem was not a poor performance (though by no means stellar) but that the actors had so little to work with anyway. The gaming scenes are absurd even if you know little about gaming. For example, although the most classic gamer paraphernalia, polyhedral dice, are displayed, they don't seem to be used in the game. note also a serious lack of junk food at the table. anyone who has ever played a tabletop RPG will know that some folks do get awfully wrapped up in their characters, but i doubt anyone has ever been as far removed from reality as Robbie. is this an attempt at propaganda, or simply to cash in on a faddish wave of hostility? i'd say somewhere in between, but leaning toward cash-in. this mentality may have once been a threat to gaming, but time has borne out the weakness of the arguments against it. walking down the street, or drinking tap water is far more dangerous. who would enjoy this movie? i'd recommend it to gamers with a sense of humor, camp lovers, and anyone wanting a more complete historical perspective of Hanks and company. if you're looking for exciting action, logical plot, or serious drama, choose something else. for farcical humor, give it a go.. it should be cheap fun.

Laughable early attempt to "show the danger" that playing D&D leads one to lose all contact with reality, this film (from the book) was an obvious attempt to cash-in on the popularity of the most durable RPG ever. Never rising above the low-level of a "Made-for" that this is, it's the sort of movie which Lance Kerwin, at the peak of his teen stardom, would have turned-down flat. Utterly ridiculous.

Mazes and Monsters was the made-for-TV special at the head of the anti-Dungeons-And-Dragons movement, spearheaded by Patricia Pulling who blamed the game for her son's suicide the same year. I know people whose parents confiscated and threw out/burned all their gear as a result of this film, which suggests such games cause loving, sensitive kids to go insane and suicidal. For a made-for-TV, it's pretty well done, despite the fact that its premise is rather, well, inflamatory. It's wholly designed to make parents fear their kid's imagination. Still fun to watch and laugh at. Although it launched Tom Hank's movie career, I've heard he won't acknowledge having made it.