Knights of Badassdom

Knights of Badassdom is a movie about LARPers (live action roleplayers, also known as those guys who hit each other with foam swords and pretend to be fantasy creatures) who accidentally summon a demon. It is a fantasy-horror-comedy B-movie which inexplicably has a number of actors with names you might recognize. It is in turns hilarious, fun, and embarrassingly bad.

The movie stars Ryan Kwanten (Jason Stackhouse on True Blood), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones) and Steve Zahn (another actor). Notable other characters are played by Summer Glau (River Tam on Firefly) and Danny Pudi (Abed Nadir on Community). The cast is clearly the strength of the film, and to the extent that it works at all, it works because they sell their parts well.

The plot is pure B-movie horror-comedy. The sets and props are clearly low-budget, though this actually works within the framework of the story. The monster effects are awful. But as long as you know you are going in to a B-movie, this should not be a surprise.

Since I am not a LARPer myself, I can't judge how ridiculous the movie's portrayal of them is. There is certainly a fair amount of mockery involved, but it mostly seems good-natured rather than mean. The movie had the same technical adviser as Role Models, if that means anything.

I enjoyed this movie, but I knew going in that it was going to be ridiculous. In places it was even worse than I imagined, but it was fun.


Performance: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Production: 2/5
Overall: 2.5/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail

What are these?

1. Lone Survivor
2. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
3. Knights of Badassdom
4. The Legend of Hercules