In the Name of the King 2

Beth: "I will mentally keep the time" is a phrase i have got use in the future

So, this was my idea: Uwe Boll's work is notoriously bad, and Dungeon Siege was the first video game I ever beat because it was pretty, (rather than good). I was curious to see how he'd mess up such bland material. We discovered the original, along with two sequels. Bee thought we should watch all three, so I figured we could watch them in order... but Dolph Lundgren starred in the sequel, and by our calculations Dolph Lundgren > Jason Statham (from the original), and I didn't even recognize the star of the third installment. So we started with the second movie. I figured, if nothing else, that watching Santa Baby 2 without context had been hilarious, and the rule might extend to other horrible franchises.

It was... not good, exactly, but a very solid B-movie. Lundgren is consistently amusing as a fish out of water. He spends a good portion of the movie complaining about all the illnesses he's going to get in the Time Before Pasteurization, going so far as to reject an offer of chicken, try to get out of drinking and avoiding the affection of the first comely wench to throw herself at him. And, speaking of comely wenches, fully half the women in the film come across as well rounded characters. The female lead doesn't - she's probably the weakest link in the film - but it's still pretty amazing for both the genre and the director.

The film's ending features several twists that are internally consistent, and a competently executed CGI dragon. It all hangs together reasonably well. I could actually tell you what was going on at almost any point in the movie.

I don't want to give the impression this is a good movie, of course: the faux-medieval dialogue is right out of a LARP, (and I should know, I've attended some), but it's an order of magnitude better than I expected from Uwe Boll, and it's entirely watchable. All Bee and I could guess was that maybe Mirror Universe Uwe Boll has replaced our original, and seeks to undo the wrongs of his doppelganger. We're going to watch the other two next to see if there's a progression of quality, or if this was just a crazy accident.

Anyway, it's late, and I'm still trying to get over giving this thing 3 stars on Netflix, so I guess that's it for my analysis. More after we watch the others.