omg lol, has anyone seen this movie with Tom Hanks? (1 Viewer)

[todd stone]

I'm sure it's real bad
Link Removed

 

[Bruce Hedtke]

That's a new one on me. Dare I say, it doesn't look interesting, either.

Bruce

 

[Dennis Heller]

Wow! I think I have seen that. I don't know if it was made for TV, but that's how I saw it. I think it was made at the height of the Dungeons and Dragons paranoia. Some kids play the game and get so wrapped up in it someone gets killed, or something. Horrible.

 

[Hendrik]

...WOW!... how about a nice two-disc DVD set, including outtakes, deleted scenes, commentary by Tom, souped-up dts-ES soundtrack - and a free bag of popcorn?...
http://www.ohthehumanity.com/reviews/rev353.html
. . . :b . . .

 

[Dwayne]

...WOW!... how about a nice two-disc DVD set, including outtakes, deleted scenes, commentary by Tom, souped-up dts-ES soundtrack - and a free bag of popcorn?...

Sounds like a perfect job for Anchor Bay!

 

[Seth Paxton]

I believe this was made for TV directly, not the theaters.

The characters are just kids that play D&D and one gets obsessed with it and starts to flip out. He thinks he really is playing and seeks out the WTC if I recall correctly. His friend are trying to help find him before he gets hurt and I think they match up something in the game with the WTC like he has done to figure out where he has gone to (he thinks the WTC looks like a mountain in the game...and it might not have been WTC). Guess I need to check the IMDb listing for the details.

Part of the time period when parents feared that D&D was about cults or would make kids crazy, etc.

Basically an after-school special in quality, but hardly as bad as that poster would lead you to believe. A moderate TV movie.

 

[Jim DiJoseph]

I saw this film. It didn't completely suck, if I remember correctly. It was about a young man who got caught up in a role playing game (much like D&D - but I don't remember if they actually referenced it) so much that he became dangerous, and in the end went crazy.

Believe it or not, I have a fond memory of this movie due to the very end of the film. (I'll give this my best shot.)

The girl who was in danger while playing Hanks' game visted him in the mental institution. He told her that his therapy was coming along well, and that he hoped to get out soon, mentally healthy. But just then, you realized that he was still calling the girl by her character's name, not her real name...and then it ended. Quite eerie, but I was much younger then.

 

[Bill J]

I'm sure it's real bad

I thought that you were going to say Forrest Gump.

 

[Andy Sheets]

I remember seeing this when it originally aired and thinking it was kind of fun in an unintentionally funny way. The Mystery Channel has actually been playing it a lot for the past few months.

 

[Kevin Matthews]

As I recall this is (believe it or not) based on a true story, I think the kid had emotional problems well before he began playing D&D and (as anyone who has played it for awhile can tell you) since D&D can suck you in if you let it, he used it as an escape from his mental demons and became lost in it.

I'm pretty sure it was based on a true account but how true to life it is as a film I don't know.

 

[Edwin-S]

All it tells me is that everyone has to start somewhere in their career.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Mazes and Monsters was a better Dungeons & Dragons movie than Dungeons & Dragons was, IMHO
While not based on any actual event, the movie was built around several real-life incidents of various people during the late seventies, early eighties. Naturally TSR (The at-time owners of D&D) would have sued the living sh*t out of the company, so the studio just gave it a fairly blatant knock-off name.
It was during this time that the entire RPG community was drawing heavy fire from just about everyone who didn't play the games, The chrisitan community bashed it for it's use of demons, wizardry/witchcraft, and a pantheon of non-christian gods. Mental health professionals believed that the elaborate fantasy "worlds" game players built would erode their ability to distinguish fact from fiction. And of course there were the "select few" who believed that it was just a russian-engineered mind-control device (with obvious links towards the electronic games of today; Asheron's Call, and Everquest) because people would literally spend hours, or even days at a time "in the game".
And in the end, Mazes and Monsters was just a B-movie that certainly didn't help the RPG industry in any way. However Hanks gave a pretty decent performance at the time. But due to the "underground" nature of the material (RPG's) it was generally overlooked by most of the movie-watching public. But then Nintendo soon entered the American entertainment market, and people just shifted the blame for corrupting youth onto the high-tech competition.

 

[andrew markworthy]

I've seen it on Brit TV. I agree that the title and synopsis look fairly silly, but as a made-for-TV movie it's not bad. I.e. okay to watch if you really have nothing else to do for a couple of hours, but if a friend phoned whilst you were watching it on TV you probably wouldn't be pressing the record button.

I must confess I've never taken to D&D. A couple of friends at school were heavily into it (or some similar game) and after one weekend they were no longer speaking to each other. When asked why, one of them explained that they'd been playing D&D for most of the weekend, and then came out with the immortal line - 'he killed my elf'. They couldn't work out why the rest of us laughed at them.

 

[Craig_T]

I actually heard that this wasn't bad at all. And how could this possibly be more embarassing than Bosom Buddies?

 

[Kevin M]

....and after one weekend they were no longer speaking to each other. When asked why, one of them explained that they'd been playing D&D for most of the weekend, and then came out with the immortal line - 'he killed my elf'. They couldn't work out why the rest of us laughed at them.

Yeah, I too heard a similar line when I was into the game in my early twenty's, I liked the game quite a lot but when a friend of mine got into a fist fight because another player "killed my fucking 20th level wizard! You asshole!"..I quit playing soon after that and got him to quit as well.
Call me snobbish but when a game becomes an obsession that elicits violence, it's time to find another hobby..............hey........HEY! GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY CRITERION SPINAL TAP!!!! (SMASH! CRASH! PUNCH!)

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Kevin,

 

[Alex-C]

Ah yes Mazes and Monsters - perfect cheese. My favorite aspect of this made for tv movie was Chris Makepeace...or should I say Chris Makeanassoutofhimself and his penchant for showing up in every scene with a different hat.
This is mentioned in the ohthehumanity review linked above.
its gawd awful and my friends and I always wonder if that was a director's choice or Chris' personal spin on his kooky character.
At any rate, it scores high on the unintentional comedy scale but not quite as high as Roadhouse (1989).

 

[Andres Munoz]

Did you guys read the review from the link posted above?

There are few greater thrills than watching a really famous person suck hard. I’m not talking about Pamela Lee here, I’m talking about Tom Hanks

 

[Dana Fillhart]

I've been playing RPG games since middle school almost 20 years ago. I think I can distinguish reality from fantasy quite well. Operative word: *think*
A friend of mine actually developed his own role-playing game system, which he demo's once a month in Glen Burnie, Maryland (www.gaianar.com if you're interested). He even has several gaming books printed, and has written a couple novels tangential to the subject of the RPG world he created. I've been playing it on and off for over a decade, and enjoy playing it still -- though my greatest fun was in college playing AD&D ("Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" for all you non-RPGers out there). I had a blast playing in several campaigns, and really miss the fun we had in those teams. Not ONCE did anybody in our group ever get violent, or end friendship over the loss of a character. Sure, there were heated contests between game-master and player -- it's the nature of the game (any game, really) -- but I believe it's the quality of the individual that determines whether or not one wishes to break a friendship over something that's not real...or whether or not one loses his or her grip on reality. Sadly, I know one or two persons who, while they aren't loony material, have developed some rather strange beliefs about UFOs and paranormal activities...but such beliefs were not caused by role-playing, any more than Andy Kaufman's weirdness was caused by his acting.
I saw Mazes and Monsters when it came out; it came out around the time a book came out called Link Removed (which I read at the time) -- I think the movie was inspired by that book. I can't remember anything about it except thinking, "Yeah, like that's what it's really like in these games," and rolling my eyes.
Hadn't realized that was Tom Hanks in it -- the first movie I remember him in was Splash, which stands out probably because of Daryl Hannah
--
Dana