This weekend is the premiere of Dungeon & Dragons: honor among thievesthe second attempt at a live-action D&D movie, after the 2000 Jeremy Irons-led box office bomb. There are reasons to be excited about this version: the cast seems nice, the tone seems good, 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 teamed up on 2018’s best funny comedy Game night.
That’s not the only thing 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 nerd named Sam. And in the run-up to promotion Honor among thieves“Sam” is reunited with his old buddies Bill (Martin Starr) and Neal (Samm Levine), and they pick up where they left off with a long (looooooong) Dungeons and Dragons game.
It’s a cute little bit. The group suddenly realizes that they have been playing for 23 years (Freaks and Geeksthe single season ended in 2000), and are surprised to find that Bill and Neal now have facial hair (Sam complains that he hasn’t reached puberty yet). At the end, Sam brings up how cool it would be if there was a D&D movie… an idea that the group immediately rejects as ridiculous and impossible. Maybe not rather as ridiculous and impossible as a 23 year old nonstop D&D game but hey I’m not going to complain about some of the Freaks and Geeks gang getting back together, just a second.