Fanboys Completes Its Journey to the Dark Side

Posted by ScuzzBuster

March 2, 2009

Fanboys director Kyle Newman has had a more twisted and bumpy journey to get his work into theaters than the main characters’ cross country trek in the movie itself. This film that has been knocking around in different rough forms for the last two years finally got a release a few weeks back. It’s probably destined for a more cult life on DVD, though. It’s a shame, because it’s an entertaining love letter the geekdom in all forms. It’s reward for all the false starts and haphazard release date promises has been to sneak on to a handful of theater screens with almost no advertising or promotion.

Fanboys details a 1998 journey of a group of old high-school buddies to drive cross country, break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and steal an early print of Star Wars Episode One prior to it’s release. The motivation for this insane plan is the fact that one of them has terminal cancer and most likely won’t make it to the real release of the film the following May.

There’s nothing revolutionary about Fanboys. It’s a pretty standard “road trip” movie. Of course they manage to entangle themselves into a series of ridiculous situations and “hilarity” ensues. While the film doesn’t really deliver any knockout punches when it comes to belly laughs it does manage to provide a fairly entertaining and enjoyable ride to its final act that culminates with the gang’s break in to the Skywalker Ranch.

Tipping the scales for me to give it real recommendation is that it is a cameo rich piece of work that is quite obviously made with a real love of the fanboy lifestyle. If you’ve followed development of the film, you probably have a handle on who these cameos come from and mostly all end up with billing in the credits, but I won’t spoil much beyond that. Seth Rogan actually plays multiple roles along with some his usual gang from his other flicks and we do get a rather satisfying line-up of other familiar faces in the culture of Star Wars and Star Trek films and fandom all played tongue-and-cheek and “in on the joke” with the film makers.

A lot of hands had their fingers in Fanboys over the last couple of years. Multiple cuts of the film have been screened, there were tons of reshoots and scenes added, including some of the celebrity cameos. Kevin Spacey takes a producer credit being one of the key backers of the film to get it finished and released.

I think one of the most interesting intangible aspects of the movie itself is that the characters here are really representative of many Star Wars geeks 10 years ago before such a large contingent of us started to turn rather bitterly against George Lucas and the journey he’s been on to the Dark Side for the past decade since the release of The Phantom Menace. In that sense, there is kind of a bittersweet sense of how much fun it was at the time, remembering how intense our anticipation was for this film event. In a sense, it’s almost sad watching these characters commit so deeply to their love of Star Wars before the fan community began really ripping apart at the seams between the releases of the films in the prequel trilogy.

Beyond that, it’s still really just a film with a lot of jokes that apply to loveable fanboy losers. There’s simply never been a limit to the amount of fun you can make of a Star Wars geek’s inability to get laid or penchant to argue over serious social issues like the fact that Luke and Leia shared two onscreen kisses prior the revelation that they were in fact siblings. It’s also full of jokes and references a true geek will appreciate like van that has it’s interior “decorative” lighting is turned on by pounding on roof interior the way Han Solo does to restart the engine on the Millenium Falcon in the Holy Trilogy and the crew calling “Chewie” instead of “Shotgun” to call dibs on the passenger front seat for the ride

Ultimately, I can’t say that Fanboys is a film that’s worth putting your life on the line for to drive across the country and see at all costs, but it did make me smile and chuckle and feel a certain amount of pride in my geekness. I think that any Star Wars fan, whether still loyal to Lucas or lapsed because of the prequels would do well to seek out Fanboys , and drop down $9.50 to remember the good times.

bookmark Technorati Del.icio.us StumbleUpon Digg Facebook Mixx Reddit