Ever wonder what happens when you give a "fan boy" a camera? If you have, you'll get your answers in painfully living color, should you dare to see the infinitely flimsy and mind-numbingly derivative Dungeons & Dragons. As a role-playing game, D & D may have been around for over 25 years, but it takes only about 25 melodramatic, over-directed seconds to realize that the movie it has inspired is going to be a disaster.

The trouble starts with first-time director (and first draft screenwriter) Courtney Solomon, who managed to option the rights to the game because its creators believed that a true D & D aficionado would know what to do with this fantastical world. Big mistake. Not only is Solomon a double D fan, but he's also a major film geek (aka fan boy) who wanted nothing more than to make, in his words, a "big action-adventure movie" like the ones Spielberg and Lucas used to make.

And thus it is that the bar room scene in D&D resembles the infamous cantina from Star Wars, that the maze our hero has to run through feels an awful lot like the one in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, while the room containing the prize at the end of the maze looks just like the opening sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But perhaps the most shameful borrowing comes in the Elves' "Ewok"-inspired village when an elf heals our wounded hero and then says "Magic is the life force of the world." Yeah, sure it is, Obi-Wan told us that more than twenty years ago.

It's almost impossible to see past these flagrant "homages" to Solomon's idols, but at least there's an inherent laugh factor in it all. After awhile, you start waiting to see what idea he'll steal next. And, if the anticipation of these moments doesn't keep your attention, then the overacting of Jeremy Irons, usually a master of restraint, as evil Mage aka magician, Profion most certainly will. Granted, Irons does deserve a break here. After all, this is a fantasy world and, in most fantasy worlds, the magicians are pretty over-the-top. They don't call them arch-villains for nothing.

In this case, Profion's melodrama stems from his passionate desire to grab control of the kingdom from young, idealistic Empress Savina (Thora Birch), who wants all people -- Mages and common men alike -- to be equal. Bad move, Empress. Don't you know that those in power like to stay that way? To stop her from achieving her goal, Profion sets his sights on the magic staff that controls the red dragons of the land. With the beasts in his control, he will surely triumph. Meanwhile, Savina has sent her elf scout Norda (Kristen Wilson) to find the scroll mapping the staff's location. Unbeknownst to all of them, the scroll has been whisked away by apprentice Mage Marina (Zoe McEllan), who has found thief Ridley (Justin Whalin) and his punk sidekick Snails (Marlon Wayans) looting through the precious goods in the Magic School. And so, the scene is set for mayhem and adventure (at least in theory) as Norda teams up with Marina, Ridley, Snails and the dwarf Elwood (Lee Arenberg) to journey through the land to recover the staff of the red dragons before the Empress is defeated.

Now, Solomon and his re-writers Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright may claim that there is a higher purpose to this movie, that it's about universal conflicts pitting rich against poor, strong against weak, race against race. Perhaps in the original games, these political messages were worthy ones, but here, in the morass of silliness that Solomon has created, they seem trite and immensely ponderous. Dungeons & Dragons is a simple story of good and evil that, in the right hands, might have been fun as escapist fare. But, with the long-winded, preachy script and the derivative visualizations of scenes, it's good for little more than a hearty "I can't believe he did that" laugh. In D & D lore, they say that the professional thief is not dishonorable, but Solomon, as a thief of ideas, most surely is. Lucas and Spielberg should sue.