Dungeons & Dragons movie summons a mini Freaks and Geeks reunion
This weekend marks the premiere of Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the second attempt at a live-action D&D movie, following the Jeremy Irons-led box office bomb from 2000. There are reasons to be excited about this version: The cast seems fun, the tone seems right, there are cool tie-ins with the game itself, and the movie comes from the writing-directing duo of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who collaborated on the quite funny 2018 comedy Game Night.
That’s not all Daley is known for — he first rose to prominence in the short-lived cult-hit NBC series Freaks and Geeks, in which he starred as a D&D-playing geek named Sam. And in the promotional lead-up to Honor Among Thieves, “Sam” has reunited with his old buddies Bill (Martin Starr) and Neal (Samm Levine), picking up right where they left off with a long (looooooong) Dungeons and Dragons game.
It’s a cute little bit. The group suddenly realizes they’ve been playing for 23 years (Freaks and Geeks’ one and only season ended in 2000), and are surprised to find that Bill and Neal now have facial hair (Sam laments that he has not yet hit puberty). At the end, Sam brings up how cool it would be for there to be a D&D movie… an idea the group instantly dismisses as ludicrous and impossible. Maybe not quite as ludicrous and impossible as a 23-year nonstop D&D game, but hey, I’m not going to complain about some of the Freaks and Geeks gang getting back together, just for a moment.
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