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Year Released: 2009
Directed by: Kyle Newman
Starring: Sam Huntington, Jay Baruchel, Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell
Production Company: Weinstein Company
Release Date: February 6, 2009
“Fanboys”, as the namesake would imply doesn’t quite live up to it’s own title. That being said, there’s certainly a trying effort at work here to make a decent comedy, but it fails due to only chuckle worthy jokes. Director Kyle Newman never embraces the full on Star Wars geek within all of us, and would rather film the surface level knowledge only inherited from the original trilogy. Like any true geek director (Tarantino, even Robert Rodriquez’s Sin City) he talks the talk, but never delves any deeper into what makes the series so popular, or why it’s been such an enduring piece of American history. Hey, I’m sure Chewbecca jokes and salivation over slave Leia pics are worthy, but there’s certainly a father-son dynamic and the maxim that absolute power corrupts. But I’m not here to tell Newman how to make a film, I’m reviewing why I didn’t like it.
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| THIS MOVIE SUCKS! |
Hey, if you’re a geek (which I proudly proclaim), and you love Star Wars (which I do) there should be a homage movie that takes in those elements and churns out a comedy right? Well, Fanboys doesn’t quite hit all the right marks, but it earns a few points for trying.
There was an Internet debacle around the release of Fanboys. Blog comment boards were lighting up over some last minute edits. The edits were intended to give the film more appeal to the masses, as a result the entire crux of the plot was taken out. The original plot was about a group of buddies planning to steal a copy of Episode: I for a dying friend. The sympathy and motivation is certainly there, and it sounds like it’s got real heart. I don’t know why anyone would go screwing with that…but money talks. Of course, the version I viewed still had the original plot, but numerous reviews cite many in-jokes were cut out and the final product is a watered down fan-shtick cobbled together by money hungry producers. So to say the least, my expectations were fairly high.
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| “Look, just give me the bluebook value of a mint PoTF maskless vader” |
So I was a little disappointed with the final product. It’s certainly no Star Wars, but it has it’s heart in the right place. This by no means equates this movie to absolute crap. However, it does leave a bit to be desired. A dying friend doesn’t equal comedy, but the friendly in-fighting, the banter between friends even, a poorly executed Chewbacca is comedy. Fanboys serves up more under cooked jokes and silliness in the name of silliness than is necessary. Even the final 20 minutes of the film, the resolution feels more of a let down after the beginning acts.
4.0 out of 10
More time should have been spent on plot and the impact of a friends impending death; doing the right thing for the right reasons. The impact ultimately is wasted on low lying jokes and not fully embracing it’s namesake as Fanboy material.