Runtime: 100 minutes
Directed by: Steven Hilliard Stern
Starring: Tom Hanks, Wendy Crewson, David Wysocki, Chris Makepeace, many famous faces in small roles
From: McDermott Productions/Proctor & Gamble Productions
Yesterday was a crummy day; thank goodness for a Sunday night discovery. Lionsgate has three different YouTube channels titled “MovieSphere” where they upload random genre movies (most of which even I was unfamiliar with), sometimes in 4K. Yes, I’ve known of this infamous scare-mongering made for TV film; well, I can’t explain why the aspect ratio is 1.78:1 instead of 1.33:1 but otherwise, no complaint that I finally got to see the film-in 4K quality to boot-and this poppycock did brighten my mood.
I can’t blame Lionsgate for censoring the word “suicide” and “STUPID”; I know that’s YouTube’s fault as from other videos, I know they are now Puritanical A-holes! YouTube is now too $#%#$%. I really hope the other films on MovieSphere don’t have these Draconian censorship issues. In any event…
Note that I’ve never played a game of Dungeons & Dragons or any similar fantasy role-playing games; however, I’ve known that back around this time, there were silly fears over it being related to such activities as Satanism, witchcraft, and even suicide. Mazes and Monsters was originally a novel, which was loosely based on a real-life disappearance of a college student named James Dallas Egbert, III, where his playing of Dungeons & Dragons was greatly overblown in the explanation for his disappearing for a month.
In 2026, of course it’s nonsense that such a game resulted in TOM HANKS (as Robbie) having a mental health crisis when they transitioned to playing it IRL in a cordoned-off cave system, or that all four of the players in the game are from broken homes. Robbie had obviously the worst childhood and what we call now “mental health struggles.” You can’t entirely blame his deteriorating mind on playing an RPG. It’s all very silly even if the viewer does feel bad that those goofy college kids have flaws, especially Robbie.
The cast has familiar faces (Chris Makepeace, Wendy Crewson, Lloyd Bochner, Louise Sorel, Anne Francis, Murray Hamilton, Vera Miles) in large or small roles, but it was Hanks and his performance which was the highlight. He made Robbie quite sympathetic no matter his mental state.
There were elements that I greatly enjoyed: the song that was sung over the opening credits had an incredible amount of reverb for some reason-it’s at least better than that Autotune crap! The opening credits and parts of the final act were filmed in New York City. That includes seeing the Bad New York City of Old (always a favorite) and noting that the non-adult movies playing in Times Square included Creepshow, a re-release of The Empire Strikes Back, An Officer and a Gentleman, & E.T. Plus, Raul Julia stars in the Broadway Musical Nine, which I understand opened in ’82.
Mazes and Monsters might offend LARP’ers and/or D&D players. As a neutral party in 2026, I can guffaw at this cultural artifact which presented how some people saw what was ultimately a benign pastime, one which ironically gained plenty of attention & fans after the controversy. Considering this debuted on CBS a few days after Christmas (December 28, to be exact) how pessimistic the final act is may surprise—not just because the climax is at a location which no longer exists.
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