Fanboys Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
Coming to our galaxy in 2007.
In 1998, five friends stole their way into history.
Coming soon to our galaxy
"Star Wars" fans travel to Skywalker Ranch to steal an early copy of "Episode I: The Phantom Menace".
| Sam Huntington | Eric |
| Chris Marquette | Linus |
| Dan Fogler | Hutch |
| Jay Baruchel | Windows |
| Kristen Bell | Zoe |
| Thom Bishops | Gruvock |
| Charlie B. Brown | Myron |
| Jeremy Burnell | Werwolf party goer |
| Victor Cano | Stormtrooper |
| Ernest Cline | Ensign Wierzbowski |
| Jess Coffer | Admiral Seasholtz Posse Member, Sandtrooper |
| David Denman | Chaz |
| Sean East | Stealth Trooper, Trekker |
| Kyle Newman |
7.40 out of 10 (2476 votes)
Visitor Reviews
This is based on what happened in Menomonie WI
posted on 10 Aug 2009An interesting factoid about this movie is that it seems to be inspired by what happened in Menomonie, WI. In this small town in northwest Wisconsin the night before the Phantom Menace came out, a group of teenagers stole the reel for the movie as a practical joke but were eventually arrested for theft. In a failed attempt to remain undiscovered for their crime, the teenagers tried to wash the movie in their bathtub. If anyone has ever been around a movie reel, they will know that they are very long and once it started to unravel the teens knew there was no escaping their crime. I haven't seen the movie yet but I hope some of the actual events will be incorporated into the film.
Not Sure How Non-"Star Wars" Fans Will Like It, But I Had a Blast
posted on 06 Aug 2009A surprisingly funny movie about a group of geeks who set off on a mission to break into Skywalker Ranch and view a print of the as-yet-unreleased latest installment in the "Star Wars" saga, "The Phantom Menace." This is a road trip comedy of the fairly standard variety, with trips to jail and Vegas, some drug use, some Internet hookups and some prostitutes thrown in for good measure. The film looks like it was made for about $20 and certainly doesn't break any new ground. But the cast of actors is game and look like they're having a ball -- there's an especially hilarious sequence that features Seth Rogen in disguise as leader of an army of rival Trekkies. I can't really imagine anyone who doesn't have a pretty thorough knowledge of "Star Wars" trivia enjoying this film, because virtually every shot and line includes some sort of reference to the George Lucas series. But since I'm a "Star Wars" fan, I thought it was a hoot.Grade: A
Nostalgia, ain't what it used to be...
posted on 31 Jul 20091999, a time when downloading trailers and booking tickets online was a long and drawn out process. Star Wars fans across the world were counting down the weeks, days, hours and minutes before Phantom Menace was released to us all.Fanboys is a comedy road movie about a varied group of geeks, who trek across America to catch a glimpse of the work print for Episode 1 locked deep within Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. Along the way they meet an assortment of characters most of which will be familiar to fans of both Wars and Trek.While there are some funny moments it does seem to miss the point of what it is to truly be a fan of sci-fi and not a specific series of films or TV show. Star Trek fans suffer the worst with Seth Rogan (in one of three roles) making followers of Roddenberry's universe sad losers with big teeth who are never too far away from their tri-corder or batleth. It also pokes nostalgic fun at the period. But while there are chuckles to be had from this there aren't many belly laughs. Kevin Smith's cameo highlights the fact that he was making funnier Star Wars references in his films a long, long time ago before Jar Jar Binks ruined almost everything.Rumours of re-shoots, tinkering from Harvey Weinstein and a much delayed release does appear to have affected the final product. It wants to be the next American Pie but it's too tame to be a true gross-out comedy and it's not even as sweet natured as that film was back in 1999. It contains enough in-jokes to keep other Fanboys happy but I doubt it will find many fans who don't still own lightsabres and Storm Trooper helmets.
You'd have to be a nerf herder to like this
posted on 19 Jul 2009I bought this and was so completely put off by it that I happily deleted it immediately after watching it. It is so bad that it is embarrassing and I shudder to think that poor George Lucas allowed them to film at the Skywalker Ranch. Maybe George is just getting old and sentimental.How could this garbage have been greenlighted and over 3 million sunk into it? What was there - a let's find some utterly pathetic script and make it into a movie freebie day at Triggerstreet? Did Kevin Spacey actually read this script and say - I know I have two academy awards and all but I really really want to put my name as producer on the worst film I can possibly that isn't porn with dwarfs and mechanical bulls. Well Kev - this is it. Go back to the theatre - where you can do little harm.The characters are offensive stereotypes, not a single heartfelt emotion exists in the film even after putting in a character dying of cancer (you find that out in the first ten minutes). He's lucky that he gets to die before the cheezy end but not so lucky that he doesn't have to go through most of the ridiculous film although he looks healthy and fit as a fiddle I might add with only a few months to live.I know that people think that nerds like this cannot possibly have real lives but many nerds do. They get married, they have kids, they even tend to have good jobs. Being a nerd is not the pathetic loser thing that it was in the 80's though a film like this acts like the dotcom boom never happened and that there are no Google and Yahoo billionaires. It's just so out of date - even taking place in 1998-1999.It copies the Judd Apatow/Kevin Smith variety of gross-out, frat boy humor, even including a cameo by Smith and Jason Mewes, as well as a couple of cameo parts played by Judd Apatow's favorite dish - Seth Rogen. I assume this was to give the film a connection with more successful nerd guy gross-outs like Knocked Up and others too numerous to mention - you know the drill - nerdy, loser, drug-user guy hooks up with extraordinary babe who falls for him (which does not happen in real life unless nerd guy is actually one of those Google billionaires). Fanboys even has that happen. .As a Star Wars and Star Trek fan I found it insulting. I did enjoy William Shatner's cameo, because the Shat is the shezit. He was the best thing in the movie. They dusted off Billy Dee Williams (well-preserved) and Carrie Fisher (not so well-preserved) and I cannot believe that they stooped this low. Maybe they got to hang out together on the set and talk about when they made a really great film like The Empire Strikes Back.The film looks very much like some guys made it in their backyards for You Tube.It could have been done so much better if there had been a decent script without the gross unfunny jokes, if the characters had not been cardboard cut-outs with no depth or characterization, if the film hadn't looked like it was shot with a handy-cam and if every on-screen moment had not literally been a smack in the face to fans of Star Wars and Star Trek.As it is - it belongs right in the Death Star trash compactor with the slime and the walls closing in.
Simply awful!
posted on 15 Jun 2009This is a horrible, horrible film! In fact, I registered on IMDb just so I could make my voice heard and so I could knock its current 7.1/10 rating down a notch to something a bit more believable.I think I used to enjoy movies like this. Maybe I got old, maybe my tastes changed, but I barely got through it last night. The only way I could see anyone enjoying this is if they were real Star Wars geeks. Being a teen-aged nerd might help too. Yes, there is a decent plot line, with a few amusing sub-plots but the absurdity of the movie, the sophomoric, juvenile one-liners, toilet humor, overt references to masturbation, will only appeal to a very specific audience and far outweigh the film's good points. The lines are neither clever, nor original and the acting, although decent, is nothing special. This is a movie for teen boys (and a very specific subset at that). Period. If you must watch this film, (and I recommend you don't) then gentlemen please, for the love of all that's good, don't watch it with your girlfriend, soon-to-be girlfriend, wife, or significant other. They don't go for this kind of thing. Trust me. Watch it with the guys (who would ideally also be Star Wars geeks). For everyone else, do yourself a favor and give this one a miss -- your brain will thank you!
Great Flick
posted on 13 Jun 2009I'm not a movie critic so I'm not going to act like one like many people do on here.Plain and simple Fanboys was great. The movie had a strong story and was very funny. If your into star wars, comics, movies, pop culture, you will throughly enjoy this movie. Go see it.Myself, and 4 of my friends took a road trip to Chicago to see it. I think the road trip really made the movie even better.Its in limited release, but its worth the road trip. It was a lot of fun.Love this flick.
A long wait which eventually delivers a Decent Comedy
posted on 03 Jun 2009Fanboys was originally shown as a preview during several movies that I saw. It never really made it huge in the theaters, but it did just recently come to DVD, courtesy of The Weinstein Company. The movie is basically a giant cliché to a lot of nerds out there. It does have a 90% delivery of Star Wars material along with a short 10% reference of the rival Star Trek. The movie also is packed with a ton of cameos from people like Kevin Smith, Ethan Suplee, Jason Mewes, Seth Rogen, Will Shatner, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, etc. All in all it is a big time comedy for the die hard Star Wars fans and for those who do enjoy a wild and adventurous comedy. The only two recognizable main stars are Jay Baruchel (Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, TV's Undeclared) and Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, School For Scoundrels, Good Luck Chuck) along with Kristen Bell (TV's Veronica Mars, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). So basically you get what you ultimately expect from this one.
"what if the movie sucks?"
posted on 18 May 2009I was looking forward to see this movie, Fanboys, with normal expectations, obviously I wasn't dying in order to see this movie like any true Star Wars fan was in order to see The Phantom Menace 10 years ago. And I was still a kid back in 1999, I saw The Phantom Menace on the big screen pretty much because of my dad who is a big Star Wars, and Star Trek, fan. Like I wrote in my IMDb comment of Robot Chicken Star Wars, I love Star Wars, I love the first movies and I like the prequels but it's been a long time since I watched those films for the last time, in other words I'm not a big connoisseur of Star Wars, certainly I could not answer those questions that are asked to the fanboys Linus (Christopher Marquette), Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel), Bottler (Sam Huntington) and Zoe (Kristen Bell), those questions that our fanboys answer correctly, they sure are Star Wars freaks, they sure were dying to see The Phantom Menace back in 1999. And that's our story, obviously if you haven't seen the movie you know that already, but anyway, we have many typical elements, for example we have that one of the friends, Buttler, was the only one that progressed, no longer a fanboy but in the course of the movie he will see what he really loves and blah blah or the love stuff with Zoe and Windows. The movie is certainly not very original, sure we have our premise (the fanboys' plan since they were kids of entering to the Skywalker Ranch seems to be the only possible way to make that Linus, who has cancer, sees The Phantom Menace. Certainly because of this we have the typical situation when the one who at first wasn't interested is the one who now wants to go on with the crazy plan. I just had my very first experience with the Star Trek world a couple of weeks ago when I saw the new film on the big screen (also I recently bought The Wrath of Khan on DVD but damn haven't seen it yet) but anyway I really enjoyed the Star Wars vs. Star Trek stuff of this movie. And is Seth Rogen who can't stand both seeing a statue of Khan being destroyed and hearing someone calling Han Solo a bitch! Rogen is hilarious here as a Trekker and as a pimp who has Star Wars tattoos being this last one the most memorable one, probably my favourite joke in the whole film is that this pimp has already tattooed on his back characters of The Phantom Menace, he has the one that he thinks will be just f****** awesome, he has a big Jar Jar Binks! I saw this movie just today after arriving home from the cinema, I saw the new Night at the Museum movie. I recently also saw Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (last Wednesday I saw that movie again on the big screen) and The Hangover so pretty much I have seen the same actors many times over the last days and here in Fanboys, apart of Baruchel and Rogen, Kevin Smith, Craig Robinson, Jason Mewes and Ethan Suplee appear, unfortunately none of them, with the exception of Suplee, is very memorable and certainly the cameos of Carrie Fisher, William Shatner, Billy Dee Williams and Ray Park are the ones that can get your attention. Anyway, while Fanboys didn't exceeded my expectations and is pretty much more or the same (I never felt completely fresh) I enjoyed it enough to can recommend it, just good entertainment.
Can You Hear Laughter In Space?
posted on 18 May 2009Tagged as "In 1998, five friends stole their way into history." Their choice of going down in history is by a road trip in which they travel West and beginning a quest to see the nerdiest, and therefor most desirable movie in the geek world, movie coming to the big screen. That film is the latest in the Star Wars franchise, Episode I. After one of the group takes sick it is nothing short of a moral imperative that the friends break into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranchi to watch the seminal sci-fi picture together before the film's actual release to the public.By now we have become inundated with Seth Rogen humor in a series of first run films. The movie feels a lot like Rogen humor only less refined. Which is what it is. Actually Rogen is in the film and plays Admiral Seasholtz and perhaps another character or two. Fanboys has had a wild ride as an indie film with the director traveling to multiplexes and comic cons to stir a fan base. The film has gone through some re-shoots and re-edits and comes out in limited release on February 6.Anyone who the film is really marketed to may have already seen this movie either at one of the many film festivals around the country or among the masses that attended Comic Con this year. There are some very funny and inspired moments in the film such as an outrageous brawl with some hard-core Trekkies, but overall the film is a tad flat and slow at times. I laughed and for that I think the film is worth seeing somewhere. 6/10** The poster of hands holding a blue light saber towards space is great and one I will add to my collection. The inspiration for the poster concept, or should I say copying, is of the 1983 teaser poster for Return of the Jedi. The Jedi poster was actually an artist rendering of George Lucas's hands with the light saber in the same manner. This poster will be linked to the Jedi by geeks forever. Purpose served.
Yawn
posted on 10 May 2009Just to get the voting average down to an acceptable level, i.e. that will not lead more and more Star Wars films to wanting to actually sit through this film...I feel should give this one a 1 out of 10.This film is a waste of talent for the gorgeously cute Kristen Bell and a display of the lack thereof for the other cast as well as the writers. There are literally thousands of references to the best films ever made, but none of them really raise a laugh and at times it gets downright painful or distasteful.The idea of the film is in itself good but executed poorly by people that seem to be aiming at an audience that would rank Porky's and American Pie among the finest films ever made, rather than at real Star Wars fans. So it is kind of an insult. Its just one cheap joke after another followed by dumb fights between Star Wars fans and Trekkies. In reality most fans like both Trek and Wars.If you really want to watch a well-made fan film you should watch George Lucas in Love. It's 10 minutes short but also 10 times better than this garbage. I could not sit this one through but I've seen enough.
Just Got Back from Comic Con
posted on 04 May 2009I just got back from Comic-Con, where they show a lot of fan made movies, all of which are made for ten dollars, and all of which are better than this.They should not have used the American Pie format for this kind of film, because this isn't this kind of film. You never for a minute think that these are real nerds. You should watch Revenge of the Nerds, or probably better, the Big Bang Theory, is you want to see nerds really well done.I also agree about the super hot girl, who actually works in the comic book store. Even if this were real, you wouldn't put it in a movie, because it isn't believable in the movie.If you went to comic con, you would know, that the super hot girls, are paid to be at comic con. The actually geek girls, are geek girls for a reason. Super hot girls are off being super hot.
Fails as a comedy and as a drama
posted on 20 Apr 2009Most of my time spent watching this was spent considering whether to continue watching or switch it off and watch something good instead. I decided to stick with it till the end, but the only reason for this was stubbornness and tenacity. The movie is utterly worthless and of no merit whatsoever, even to the most rabid fanboy.Without doubt this is the worst piece of dross I have viewed all year. Horribly contrived and forced "humour" that resulted in perhaps three smiles and absolutely no laughs. It was a pretty painful experience, and not one I would recommend.If you are thinking about watching it, even if you are a huge Star Wars fan, just do yourself a favour and watch Episode 1 again instead. Episode 1 was pretty bad, but this is a real stinker.It's no wonder at all that the studio sat on it for so long. Any rational person viewing it would immediately be aware that there is nothing at all of merit in this waste of celluloid.It's difficult to place the blame anywhere in particular, as the product fails on every level. God alone knows what they were trying to achieve, but the whole thing is utterly insipid from the ground up. To think I was actually looking forward to watching this...wow.
Fun for Star Wars Fans
posted on 02 Apr 2009I always laugh at those that review these types of movies expecting to see a work of creative genius; especially when it seemed like the movie was delayed or shelved for a long period of time before it was actually released.You know what, it is what it is. And I enjoyed it. While it may not have been any where near as sharp as Clerks, did you really think it would be? I loved the cameos and getting caught up in the Star Wars nostalgia again.I would have liked to have seen a cameo by Lucas himself though. I was waiting for him to come out at the ranch.If for no other reason, the scene with Chief was worth watching the whole movie.
The Fog of Wars
posted on 02 Apr 2009Sam Huntington plays what may be the lead role in the otherwise ensemble Fanboys, not the friend who has been given four months to live but the guy inheriting the father's business and facing a future he equates with the dark side, not unlike George Walton Lucas Jr who did not want to simply inherit his father's stationery store. Huntington also appeared as the lead in another ensemble road movie Detroit Rock City, where he was under the thumb of a domineering religious mother. That film was released in 1999, a year after Fanboys begins its story.If you like Detroit Rock City, chances are Fanboys will appeal as well. Instead of KISS, these characters are obsessed with Star Wars in a period where there wasn't as much need to qualify those words. One of the guys happens also to be obsessed with the Canadian rock band RUSH. At first some references come from out of nowhere, but they add a texture – people are going to like what they like. In both movies, Huntington has a scene where he has to strip in a bar. It made more narrative sense in Detroit Rock City, but at least he's not alone in the humiliation and one of his friends takes the brunt of it.I didn't have to be a hardcore fan of KISS to enjoy Detroit Rock City and likely people don't have to be fans of RUSH or Star Wars to enjoy Fanboys but it will help. I enjoyed where the RUSH music ends up being used and it helps put the viewer in the nostalgic mindset of, well, teens of the early and mid nineteen-eighties – exactly the range of time (1982-1984) that four of the five guys were born; Kristen Bell was born in 1980, so she's an Empire Strikes Back baby. Dan Fogler was born in 1976, a year before Star Wars itself, but because he is heavy some in the audience may accept him as a childhood and high school friend of the others. His sensibilities are those of the director and at least one of the writers, all born in 1976, or perhaps closer to people like myself who were fans in their early thirties when the notorious 1999 Star Wars prequel hit us. The characters do seem to show up at a party with teenagers, and yet most own business. Ultimately they aren't meant to be flesh and blood. One happens to look like young George Lucas we've seen in file photos or from the funny short "George Lucas In Love," and Kristen Bell seems to have died her hair dark for one reason only: to look more Leia-like in a later scene. Seth Rogan plays three roles, which helps reinforce the unreality along with cameos by Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mews and Kevin Smith) along with Smith's documentary guy Zack who was known to like donkeys in Clerks II. Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher also pop up in amusing cameos that allow us to assume the interior of Skywalker Ranch in act II of the story may not have to look and work as it does or did in reality. (Much of Lucasfilm's operation has been moved to The Presidio property now.) For all the amusement and invention, and the heartfelt stakes at the heart of it with a friend's dying wish, the movie is a little short sighted in the sense that these young men – characters in their late twenties or early thirties – often talk in outbursts more suitable for thirteen-year olds. There is an over-the-top hatred between Star Wars and Star Trek fans, when in reality whether we like one brand more than the other there is more audience crossover than polarity. For a comic book store owner to throw out a member of the competing fan base and call him a "Kirk-loving Spock sucker" will play as off-putting and mean even if it is a satirical exaggeration meant to expose the absurdity of the Trek versus Wars rivalry. Unlike Ebert, I'm not bothered that the kid with cancer can participate in a fight, since no extraordinary skill is displayed, any more than the idea that he is walking around and simply taking his pills. It upholds the idea that genre trivia knowledge has an inverse relationship to carnal knowledge. The characters can be at once cool and pathetic, or offensively immature and brilliant which are combinations many people like to pretend do not exist in reality. Overly sensitive audiences won't like this movie. There are bumps along the way but I like where it is going, and it has a very appropriate ending line.Despite the very limited release of this movie and relatively little hype for the film itself as opposed to the internet controversy, Fanboys lives up to the anticipation a lot of us may have built up, unlike Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. When movies about 9/11 come out, many people coo "too soon." Maybe ten years after we met Jar Jar Binks we can finally laugh at the summer of 1999. Or maybe the solution ended up being this temporal displacement of a story that is really about being stuck in the late 70's and early eighties whether we had been born then or not, listening to RUSH and worrying only that Yoda sounds a bit like Sesame Street's Grover. Not an entirely unpleasant fog.
Pretty bad...
posted on 27 Mar 2009With all the comedic talent in this mess you would think it could somehow be funny, but the truth is it fails on all levels. The leads are just boring characters who we care nothing for, every joke is seen coming a mile away and I think I laughed twice during the whole thing. The cameos are wasted except for Shatner who was funny. The idea that Kristen Bell would be in love with Jay Baruchel is retarded. Poor script, just unfunny, seems like it was written by nine year old kids who kept saying to themselves "you know what would be really funny?, how about we have the real Princess Leia be a doctor in the hospital!" All in all a good waste of 2 hrs of my life.
A Nutshell Review: Fanboys
posted on 13 Mar 2009You really gotta take yours hats off to the writers of Fanboys, because while one might think it's easy to have the majority of the lines here adapted from some memorable one-liners from various of fan-supported films, contrary by the time you sit through this, you would have gathered new found respect in having to string it all and having them make some sense, though some may have felt a little forced (pardon the pun).Set in 1999 some 3 months before the release of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Fanboys has relative unknowns Sam Huntington (who snagged the role of Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns), Chris Marquette (who looks like Paul Rudd), Jay Baruchel (one of those guys in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Tropic Thunder and Knocked Up) and Dan Fogler (Good Luck Chuck, and the lead in Balls of Fury) play a group of buddies who decide to take a road trip from Ohio to the George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, in order to sneak a peek at the first prequel Star Wars film. The initial few minutes sets up their background, suffice to know that they are some really nerdy geeks who live and breathe everything that Lucas created, and save for one, don't really hold a day job. One's living in his mom's garage, while another runs a comic book store and spends his time interacting with the opposite sex online and oblivious to the hints dropped by store worker Zoe (Kristen Bell, who was in Pulse and as Sarah Marshall herself in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, only now in dark hair). You know the (tired) drill.Things only pick up when the chaps hit the road, and like a typical road movie, it's episodic, with almost everything already seen in the trailer. Each episode allows some geek trivia to be loaded on screen, be it lines of dialogue, a cameo by a celebrity (William Shatner, Billy Dee Williams, Ray Parks and so on...), coupled with the insane arguments within the passionate members of the group as they debate live and death issues like the incestuous relationship between the Skywalker siblings, and to every Star Wars fan who are not Trekkers, the intense rivalry between the two, who in my opinion represent as rabid a fan can get in their allegiance to possibly two of the largest make believe worlds.Unfortunately there are few moments of genuine laughter, and you'll be left quite unsure if you're laughing at the jokes, or at the very lame delivery of the punchline. Suffice to say that the trailer gave away most of the best bits, and there's a slew of the expected twists and turns coming up that would already have been hinted at. I'm not sure how Harry Knowles got himself a short stint at this gig, but again, most guys here are either playing themselves, or show some flashes of flamboyance from their legendary on-screen characters. For example, since there was much talk about Leia kissing Luke, you'd half expect somewhere for Carrie Fisher to pop up playing another character, and locking lips with someone.This film is made for the fanboy in you, or for those who are itching for a challenge in identifying any fan moment or reference, to determine who amongst a group is the bigger geek. Otherwise, there are plenty of situations that'll just fly by your radar, with some folks getting it and guffawing away, and others sitting and staring blankly at the screen. If pop culture is beyond you, then skip this. Otherwise the only kick you'll get is from the trivia pursuit game you'll automatically play.
Fanboys is a mess; it substitutes volume and slapstick for wit.
posted on 09 Mar 2009FANBOYS (2008) is a road trip comedy (c. late 1998) about several young friends who decide to go cross-country, break into Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch and be the first to see a rough cut of "The Phantom Menace." Their mission is given urgency and (an attempt at) poignancy because one of the friends is dying of cancer (which becomes convenient only as the plot requires it; otherwise he is as energetic as the rest of the actors in the movie...must be that "Love Story" variety of cancer).Sam Huntington (who stole scenes as Jimmy Olsen in "Superman Returns") is the lead (and gives the only halfway realistic performance; everyone else is a cartoon) as a guy torn between taking over his father's car lot business or becoming a comic artist (which he does in a ridiculously short time frame, by the way). His journey is meant to echo Luke Skywalker's; torn between family and a longing for fulfillment. Except that his family is so obnoxious, the decision is practically made for him (his father and brother feel like they wandered off of a bad '80s comedy).Other stock clichés include the generic "nerd" (from Nerds R Us) among the already geeky buddies whose 'perfect girl' is his friend/co-worker who loves him from afar (don't ask me why). Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Sarah Marshall) takes that 'honor,' as she plays yet another spunky, feisty, tough 'cute girl' who manages to save the day time and again. And of course, the "Revenge of the Nerds'-style "Booger" ripoff; a long-haired "Chewbacca-Solo" who drives a Millennium Falcon-like van (oh, my side hurts from laughing so hard; a Star Wars-styled van, complete with sound effects...ho, ho, ha, ha; too funny). "Booger"-lite is easily the movies' worst character; and I can't help wondering how much BETTER the film would've been without him.There are also about 1,000 cameos in the movie; Carrie Fisher, William Shatner, Ray Park (Phantom Menace's "Darth Maul), Seth Rogan, Kevin Smith, Billy Dee Williams, etc. Not ONE of these cameos made me so much as smile. In place of wit or intelligence, the audience is assaulted with shouts, screams, slapstick pranks, gross-out humor and sex jokes only amusing to a 50 yr old, mentally feeble virgin.There was tremendous opportunity EVERYWHERE in this film to be so much funnier than it was. I know and understand that the film had studio-mandated cuts and massive re-edits (it shows), but that's not an excuse. The acting, the jokes (almost ALL of them) and the lowbrow humor utterly fail at every turn (even if there were only 20-odd min or so of the original cut floating around in there, it still would've stunk). I can't imagine any "Phantom Edit" making it any better; the base material does not work.This film (in the right hands) could have been on a par with the breezy, witty and sophisticated 'other' movie about sci-fi fans, "Free Enterprise" (1998); which also had Shatner (although he was far better in that film than this one). In the case of "Fanboys", the film-makers (and re-editors) aimed really low; and they barely achieved even that.
Yet another good idea turned into garbage
posted on 05 Mar 2009On a whole the premise of the story seems to be relatively promising, four Star Wars fanboys are all waiting anxiously for the release of the highly anticipated Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace. But as news comes that one of the characters has only a few months to live, they decide to break into Skywalker Ranch to see the film they've been desperate to see for so long.As I said, the film seems to have an entertaining plot, there are some laughable moments and a monumentally geeky cameo from Mr. Seth Rogen, who seems to have two parts in it. But that's really where it ends, the plot becomes too mushy for my liking, it falls into the inevitable happy ending category. Though to be fair, the acting on the most part was cheesy (to say the least) from the start, especially the unbearable performance from Sam Huntington, who seems to exude a charmless manner that really grates on you towards the end. It truly is a film I recommend you not view.
Old-fashioned Movie Piracy
posted on 19 Feb 2009(Spoilers Ahead) 'Fanboys' was really a harmless picture, not great, certainly not original, enormously predictable, yet, it still had some heart and fond memories of the late 1990s. As with any road picture, you can expect some or all members to get arrested, "accidentally" wander into a gay bar – wow, that was foreshadowed long before they entered the establishment, do drugs, attempt to give up along the way, have a blow out, meet countless cameos and almost always take a detour through Las Vegas. Come to think of it, barely an original idea happened once they got out on the road. Nevertheless, the overall concept – nerds bent on seeing the forthcoming Star Wars prequel, Episode I (this is set in late 1998) early by breaking into George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, was well executed by the four guys, at least they did the best they could with the material, and made believable geeks, er "fanboys." I disagree with some of the critics that said this movie was released far too late; I think this was a nice remembrance of that time frame. I didn't wait in line for 'Star Wars: Episode I' (thank God, I didn't – what a disappointment) in fact, I waited until the middle of the next day when the theatre was nearly empty of the true "fanboys." But, I do remember the hype, anticipation and passion these 'Star Wars' fans had. It was nice to recapture that. Since 1999, I barely remember a movie even with such a following. Sure, kids and adults always are hyped for the next 'Harry Potter' and a lot were excited about 'Transformers 2.' But nothing compares to the hype these young adults in 'Fanboys' exhibited. Recommended, but just for fun. Side note: Loved Seth Rogan's large tattoo.
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I Saw This Today (12.7.08)
posted on 22 Aug 2009This was shown today at the Santa Fe Film Festival.I truly loved it, totally unexpected, as I knew very little about the film. Someone today mentioned a February release, but they also said that was not confirmed, so take that date only as a possible.I can say that I think you wont be disappointed, it hits a lot of notes, none of them bad. Lots of actors I've never seen before, their interaction was natural, it felt like their relationships were real.There was a good sized crowd, so it seems there was a lot of interest here at the film festival, and everyone applauded at the end.Kate