From today's Oregonian....
"Fanboys" kind of made me want to stop being one. I hate writing that, because I love the idea of this road-trip comedy. It's 1998, and a quintet of rabid Ohio "Star Wars" fans embark on a crazy heist scheme: Break into Skywalker Ranch and steal a workprint of "Episode I" so one of their number, who has cancer, can see the film before he dies. (This may qualify as a form of assisted suicide.)
This script has been floating around since before "Episode I" opened, and you can see that first-time screenwriter Ernest Cline and director Kyle Newman were shooting for a balance of affection for and satire of the world of obsessive Lucas fandom. The cast has chemistry, but the final film just frankly isn't very funny -- it's a string of weaksauce, ersatz-Kevin Smith horny-geek gags and cameos, flatly staged. It's also surprisingly tone-deaf to the actual nuances of fan interaction (e.g., fans love Harrison Ford, but don't loudly argue over whether he's the greatest actor of all time).
To be fair, the movie's a compromised product -- partially reshot by another director after its stars blew up, then edited and re-edited amid some very public geek-community protest. (There's an absolutely fascinating breakdown of the whole production fiacso in this KCRW podcast, starting at 13:17.) I love that fanboys fought for "Fanboys." Unfortunately, their passion was misplaced.
P.S. If you want to watch someone dealing with similar characters and ideas in a much more raw and honest (if far less cinematically polished) way, check out a short my pal Chris Hanel made years ago called "The Formula." It's about a bunch of serious geeks trying to make a "Star Wars" fan film -- and to my thinking it really sort of nails how fanboys see the world.
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C; 90 minutes; rated PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual material, language and drug content; playing in Portland at Living Room Theaters.
'Fanboys' (The Oregonian, March 20, 2009)
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