SnoopyStyle Mazes and Monsters is a role playing board game. JayJay (Chris Makepeace) is diminished by his overbearing mother. Kate (Wendy Crewson) is his friend. Daniel (David Wallace) suffers under his domineering parents. Robbie Wheeling (Tom Hanks) is starting anew at college after some problems in his past. The three friends convince the level 9 Robbie to play the game again despite his obsessive problem with it. JayJay decides to bring the game into the real world of the caverns.The made-for-TV production is pretty weak. The most compelling part is Tom Hanks early in his career during his 'Bosom Buddies' days. It has the lesson-of-the-week element to it. I also remember thinking as a kid that it's a fascinating concept to play the game for real. Nowadays, it's called LARP. The mental disturbance is done badly but Hanks shouldn't be blamed for it. It's cheesy and probably better to let Hanks do some acting.

Sean Lamberger A full-on smear campaign about the evils of Dungeons and Dragons, from the height of the parental outcry against the game. Funny and sad in the same context as Reefer Madness, it's akin to a long after-school special in the blunt, inelegant way it hammers away at its only point. An extremely young Tom Hanks, freshly released from his run on Bosom Buddies, cut his teeth on more serious material in this leading role. As the poor sap who nosedives into deep mental illness as a direct result of the game, his part is madly corny and he clearly had some growing pains to work through before becoming the dramatic juggernaut we'd all come to know a decade later. Badly produced, terribly acted, smug and boring and predictable to the final reveal, it's a living stereotype, the very essence of a bad made-for-TV movie.

Aaron1375 Yes, about the only thing this film is memorable for is that it starred a youngish Tom Hanks who only a few short years later would be a relevant star in Hollywood. Here though is not a movie that is going to showcase his talents much at all and the only other thing that might be considered somewhat entertaining about this flick is the scene where he thinks he sees a monsters and runs a guy through. Yes, this movie is about the evils of playing a game that makes a group of people use their imaginations and try to come up with interesting scenarios. Basically, an after school type special about the evils of the game Dungeons and Dragons cleverly retitled here as Mazes and Monsters. Apparently, the makers of this film thought that nerds should not have fun of any sort unless they were going to go out and do underage drinking, drugs, having lots of unprotected sex and harass other weaker children like all the popular kids were doing. No, these bad people were playing a game that actually required one to use there brain, heaven's no! Not that, if they have a brain they actually may be able to think for themselves and not be brainwashed by certain groups out there. Yes, I think this movie is utterly stupid and a waste of time. Granted, it could be a movie against addiction, but there are a lot fewer people who died taking Dungeons and Dragons to far in its entire existence than than say what drunk driving claims in like a month.

BlackWolfe Somehow I missed this movie when it came out, and didn't see it until about twelve years later. I bought it based on the cover copy, which seemed to indicate a fun fantasy movie: D&D player ends up in a fantasy world. It never occurred to me that they meant "fantasy" literally.HOWEVER, a lot of people have been unfairly attacking this movie for years, claiming that it espouses the "dangers" of role-playing.FACT: Tom Hanks' character is established to have psychological problems from the beginning of the movie, including an inability to separate fantasy and reality.FACT: This psychologically unstable character is the only one to have this problem.FACT: The rest of the players use problem-solving skills they developed from role-playing to save his life.Far from showing the dangers of role-playing, I thought this movie did a good job of showing the kind of deductive and inductive reasoning that can be developed by using your imagination.I think it did at least as good a job of defending role-playing as it did attacking it.