Mazes and Monsters/YMMV

• Accidental Aesop: The storyline makes far more sense if you take the film to be one about the importance of stable families rather than the anti-D&D message which was intended. Daniel's only real home problems are the fact that his parents disapprove of his chosen career path, and in most ways he's the most normal of the group (rather questionable dress sense aside). Kate comes from a family torn apart by a divorce, which has led to her having trouble sustaining her own relationships. Jay Jay's mother seems to care more about her career than her son and frequently ignores what he wants, leading to him trying to get attention by pulling stunts like screwing up the group's campaign so they'll have to participate in his LARP. Finally, Robbie has an almost completely dysfunctional family, which he tries to escape by engrossing himself in Mazes & Monsters to the extent that he starts to believe he really is Pardieu.
• Bile Fascination: The film maintains a strong cult status because of how many gamers love to bash it.
• Colbert Bump: This page didn't even exist before Spoony reviewed the film.
• Critical Research Failure: Priests do not have the power to fly in Dungeons & Dragons.
  • When Jay Jay makes his character jump into a pit to get him killed off, there's no roll to see if he made it out - the character instantly dies.
    • As pointed out by Spoony, this leads to an even bigger Critical Research Failure: instead of hauling Jay Jay's character out of the pit of gem-encrusted spikes, prying the gems off, and going off to someone to resurrect him, the rest of the group leaves Jay Jay's guy in there, declare their campaign over with, and berate Jay Jay for doing something so stupid.
      • Moreover, they act as though Jay Jay will need to start off as a new character at Level 1. In D&D, you can start your character at a higher level to accommodate for higher level campaigns.
  • Upon meeting Robbie, Kate makes small talk by saying "how great it is to be building your own scenarios at Level 9". In virtually all Role Playing Games, there is no level requirement to making your own game. Some people don't even play D&D as characters, but solely as Dungeon Masters.
• Did Not Do the Research: The film bears little resemblance to an actual role-playing game, let alone how people tend to play them.
  • Case in point: the scene where the delusional Robbie is brandishing a knife, even though his character is a cleric.
  • An anti-Dungeons & Dragons organization quoted the novel as a non-fiction document, despite the novel explicitly being fiction.
  • Also Robbie's character displays the writer's lack of psychological knowledge. His thought processes do not make any sense, even for a crazy man. How would a man who believes he's in a fantasy world be able to use a cab and a phone, without even referring to them as a chariot or such? And worse, how does someone in a dark cave spontaneously crack and believe he's actually in the game?
  • The group seems to act as though LARPing is something incredibly new. However, the earliest-recorded "true" LARP was started in 1977.
• Fridge Logic: When Kate and Robbie break up after Robbie, thinking he is Pardieu, states he can no longer have intimate contact with her (because he's a priest, of course), Kate exclaims that it's "Just like last time!" As this review posits, does this mean Kate has a history of dating guys that suddenly turn into priests that must cease having sex with her?
  • She could, however, be assuming that he's lying or trying to make up some excuse as to why he can't be with her anymore - so it could just be that she's had a bad breakup before.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Daniel's parents keep trying to force him into a computer science degree at MIT, which he eventually goes for at the end of the film, because they believe he'll be able to make more money this way than by making games. Thanks to the flood of comp-sci degrees at the time and the subsequent trend to outsourcing software development overseas, this degree has actually become relatively worthless...except in the gaming industry.
• Narm: Not shockingly, most of it from Tom Hanks.
  • "I can't! I'm all out of spell points!"
  • The entire scene where he breaks down on the phone while talking to Kate after stabbing someone.
    • To quote Spoony: "WARNING: the following clip will completely ruin your ability to enjoy any Tom Hanks movie you'll ever see again."
  • "Jay Jay, what am I doing?!"
• Shocking Swerve: Given the subject matter, most viewers would probably expect one of the group to die or commit suicide, so when Jay Jay starts fuming over how under-appreciated he is and thinks about killing himself in a memorable fashion, you think you know how it's going to go down. But then Robbie spontaneously cracks during the cave LARP, which seems to come completely out of nowhere.
• So Bad It's Good: Despite the anti-gaming slant, most gamers have watched this film and howled with laughter at it.
• Special Effects Failure: The "Gorvil" Robbie keeps hallucinating is a spectacularly bad rubber suit.
  • Honestly, you'd see better costumes in the original Star Trek and Power Rangers.
• Tear Jerker: As ridiculous as this movie is one can't help feel bad for Robbie during his sudden relapse to sanity. Especially after he realized he may or may not have really killed someone.
• What an Idiot!: Kate completely blows off Robbie's sudden mental shift into Pardieu, ignoring blatant references to his character and instead assuming that his talks of being celibate are an attempt to break up with her.
  • Robbie's friends also don't notice when Robbie dresses as Pardieu while acting like Pardieu.