Knights of Badassdom

Here's the unfortunate thing. This movie lends itself to the potential of a lot of funny situations and jokes. I saw the trailer for this movie, it had Steve Zahn, an actor I think is incredibly underrated and should be in more things. It had Peter Dinklage, an amazing actor who also has made me laugh on many occasions. The short answer is, this movie should have been a lot better.

Instead we got this pile of shit.

Knights of Badassdom is about three friends, Joe, Eric, and Hung (played by Ryan Kwanten, Steve Zahn, and Peter Dinklage). In the beginning, Joe is dumped by his girlfriend for the reason of... plot convenience? His friends try to cheer him up by getting him really high and drunk and bringing him to a Larping (LARP= Live action role playing) event... even though that's not totally how marijuana and alcohol works.

Joe played Dungeons and Dragons before he dated his girlfriend and his friends think that bringing him back to who he was before he dated his girlfriend is a great way to get over here... I guess.

To initiate Joe into the game, Eric uses a book he bought on Ebay, uses a dead language I'm pretty sure doesn't actually exist and "casts a spell" to start the game. What he doesn't know is that he accidentally summons a succubus demon from hell in the form of Joe's ex girlfriend Beth (played by Margarita Levieva).

While they're Larping, they're joined by an actually kind of good cast. You've got the main three. The game master (played by Jimmi Simpson from Its Always Sunny) a guy named Lando (played by Danny Pudi from Community) and a really hot girl (played by Summer Glau from Firefly)who is only playing to help her cousin who takes the game WAY too seriously.

To top it all off, you have Peter Dinklage on shrooms... That's hilarious!

You've got a cast of really funny people all put together and what do you do?

YOU KILL OFF THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE FIRST?!?!?!?!

Seriously, they kill of Peter Dinklage and Danny Pudi.

I don't know if these guys were just really expensive and they ran out of money to pay them, I don't know if they just didn't know who these two were and thought the rest of the cast would be enough, I don't know if they ran out of jokes, but holy damn guys. When you have have Abed and Tyrion Lannister, you don't just kill them off.

Now for me, this was a huge turnoff to the movie. I wasn't nearly as invested, especially since Peter Dinklage was probably one of the better parts of the movie.

But the part that makes me even more mad is when they find their bodies. I'd like to say that they did the right thing called the police and got the hell out of those woods... but no.

This movie just really wanted us to see a bunch of larpers fight off a demon, so much that the Sheriff's respond to an emergency with paintballs in order to mess with the larpers, Summer Glau can't control her cousin who stupidly runs into the woods to fight a demon, and even when they know the way to destroy the demon with the spell book, the guy who actually understands it is never around.

Oh and by the way.

This would never happen ------------------------>

Everything about it. Summer Glau would never larp, I don't care how you dress it up. A girl that hot would never larp, and especially not in that outfit. Secondly, these two falling for one another was the most contrived and dumbest thing on the planet. They barely kiss and its the most awkward thing in the world. Worst chemistry ever. Just everything about these two felt contrived and forced which kind of hurts the movie, especially when Peter Dinklage dies.

There's a lot of routes that they could have gone with this movie. There's a lot of funny jokes they could have made with this movie. Something as stupid as raising a demon from hell in a funny circumstance has been done before, See This Is The End. And if you even wanted to drop the dumb demon plot, you could have had the entire movie be a bunch of larpers against a bunch of Paintball jocks. You can make a funny movie that involves Larping, Role Models did it really well.

Its a funny topic... but Knights of Badassdom kind of shit the bed with it. Put aside killing off Peter Dinklage and Danny Pudi, the acting was awful, the movie just didn't make sense, and the only jokes were just the fact that all these people were larping. Larping is funny but its only when you do it correctly, you can't just show people larping and expect us to laugh every time... but you also shouldn't have killed of Peter Dinklage and Danny Pudi. Biggest fault of the movie.

But that's my thoughts on this movie. What did you think of Knights of Badassdom? Are there any redeeming qualities of it that got overshadowed by the killing of two really funny actors? Comment and Discuss below! Also shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 on Twitter and Follow me to get updates on movies and movie news coming up.

I'll leave you with this. Sometimes all we have is the trailer. Here's the trailer for the movie, you let me know what you think. Enjoy!