Fanboys, the oft-delayed movie by director Kyle Newman, opens with a funny take on the legendary exposition "crawl" that opens each and every Star Wars film (and I’ve also wondered where those words went off to after flying past the viewer). Then we go to a Halloween party in 1998, where Eric Bottle (Sam Huntington) hooks up with his old Star Wars nerd buddies Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel) and Linus (Christopher Marquette) as well as Zoë (Kristen Bell) after losing touch for several years. Unlike Hutch, Windows and Linus, who still live, eat and breathe all things Star Wars (they even show up at the party as Darth Vader and a pair of storm troopers) Eric has moved on with his life after graduating from high school. He’s buckled down, dumped all of his boyish fantasies, and became a car salesman at his father’s dealership.
When Eric discovers that Linus is dying of cancer, he becomes wracked with guilt--to the point where he helps revive a particular fantasy that Linus and the other Star Wars geeks have long held onto: to go to Skywalker Ranch, the home base of the movie empire of Star Wars guru George Lucas, and steal a copy of The Phantom Menace, the latest Star Wars film. With Linus losing his health battle, this road trip takes on a special significance, because he most likely won’t live to see the official opening of the film. Setting out in Hutch’s tricked out Star Wars van, these intrepid adventures, who are soon joined in their quest by Zoë, face all sorts of dangers, including confrontations with their most deadliest of enemies: Trekkies.
And despite an unfortunate veering off into bathroom humor--literally--the film
manages to effortlessly maintain its fun, breezy air. Fanboys serves as both a
loving send up, as well as a love letter, to the Jedi nerds within all of us who
adore Star Wars. Director Newman, along with writers Ernest Cline and Adam F.
Goldberg, sets up the story as if it were a modern day Star Wars film, with each
of their characters taking up the archetypes from the original trilogy (Eric is
Luke; Zoë is Leia, and so on). The gang hit a biker bar that’s rougher than the
Mos Eisley cantina; and they even wind up in the Skywalker Ranch’s version of
the trash compactor. The production values are very well done, given the low
budget, and the actors are all superb, and very funny.
This is a movie made for
the sort of die-hard Star Wars fans who have seen the movies more than once, and
who will easily catch all of the in-jokes that are peppered throughout the
narrative. That includes such actors from the film series as Carrie Fisher
(Princess Leia), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) and even Ray Park
(Darth Maul), who appears as a Skywalker Ranch security guard. Kevin Smith and
Jason Mewes also have a cameo here, and Seth Rogen sinks his teeth into his three
roles. The making of featurettes are too short, and they recycle footage
from each other, but the commentary, featuring the cast, rocks very hard (the
joke--and impersonation--of Chewbacca snorting coke had me in such hysterics
that I had to stop the DVD just to catch my breath). Fanboys is just a fun
little film that should put a smile on the faces of anybody who’s a major fan of
Star Wars.
--SF
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