Fanboys

The funny thing about disturbingly passionate Star Wars debates is, more often than not, nothing. Anyone who has ever been involved in a heated nerd-off, or has perhaps simply been witness to one, can attest to the fact that they rarely come off sounding like they were scripted by Kevin Smith. The main problem with Fanboys, a film about four George Lucas die-hards who travel the country in an attempt to get a sneak peak at the dreaded Episode 1, is that it doesn’t sound like it was scripted by Kevin Smith either. Well, that’s unless you count his 15 second cameo, which winds up being the highlight of the whole entire movie.

The nicest thing I can say about Fanboys is that it’s never insultingly bad, and it is, as the late, great Douglas Adams would say, mostly harmless. But for a film that’s been in and out of development for a sad number of years now, that’s far from high praise. Shockingly, the cast-list features more funny people than you can shake a very large stick at (including the likes of Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, and Ethan Suplee), but apparently someone took that very same stick and thoroughly beat the humor out of almost every single one of them. In fact, this is the first comedy I’ve seen Seth Rogen in where he didn’t get one single laugh out of me, and they gave the man two different roles with which to commence with the merrymaking! Trust me, it’s every bit as hard to believe when you’re actually watching it happen on screen, but really it all comes down to a team of writers who like to prove they’re familiar with this particular brand of geek culture every damn chance they get (they actually squeeze two, count ‘em, two Star Wars trivia scenes into this movie), yet can’t seem to muster anything but a handful of barbs that betray any genuine insight into the rather unique minds of folks who camp on sidewalks to watch a movie premier. As someone who loves more than a fair bit of sci-fi in his life, I can attest to the fact that this stuff would prove ample fodder for a screenplay that truthfully knew just what it was mocking. Without that key ingredient, Fanboys winds up a somewhat typically teen-centric parade of boob and fart jokes, just all dressed up in a slave Leia costume.