Photo by John Estes/The Weinstein Company, John Estes/The Weinstein Company
Jay Baruchel (top), Dan Fogler (in Rush shirt), Chris Marquette, Sam Huntington and Kristen Bell find themselves in a familiar-looking (to "Star Wars" aficionados) trash dump on the Skywalker Ranch in "Fanboys."
If the thought of Princess Leia's hubcap hairdo puts a wiggle in your Wookiee, you're probably the ideal viewer of "Fanboys," a long-gestating road comedy about a quintet of "Star Wars" obsessives who decide to break into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch to sneak an unauthorized advance peak at "Episode 1: The Phantom Menace."
Photo by John Estes/The Weinstein Company
Jay Baruchel (top), Dan Fogler (in Rush shirt), Chris Marquette, Sam Huntington and Kristen Bell find themselves in a familiar-looking (to "Star Wars" aficionados) trash dump on the Skywalker Ranch in "Fanboys."
A group of friends who are avid "Star Wars" fans travel west to see the Holy Grail of all sci-fi movies, "Star Wars: Episode I." ...
Rating: PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual material, language and drug content
Length: 90 minutes
Released: February 6, 2009 Limited
Cast: Billy D. Williams, Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell, William Shatner
Director: Kyle Newman
Writer: Ernest Cline
As that synopsis indicates, "Fanboys" is a period piece, set "a short time ago in a galaxy not so far, far away" -- specifically, smalltown Ohio in 1998, where four recent high-school graduates are impatiently awaiting the release of the first "Star Wars" film in 15 years.
The friends include "female kryptonite" Windows (Jay Baruchel), who owns a comic-book shop with a Chewbacca growl for a door chime; chubby, obnoxious Hutch (Dan Fogler), who lives in his mother's garage, which he calls the "carriage house"; Eric (Sam Huntington), who gave up his dream of drawing comic books to join the "Dark Side of the Force" (he sells used cars); and Linus (Chris Marquette), whose terminal cancer (!!!) convinces the buddies it's time to pile into Hutch's "nerdmobile" and head for California. (Using a cancer subplot to motivate the action may be distasteful, but the filmmakers soft-pedal the tearjerking sentiment.)
Also pulled into the quest is beautiful fangirl Zoe (Kristen Bell), who, inevitably, eventually finds herself in the Princess Leia slave bikini from "Return of the Jedi."
For all its dumbness, "Fanboys" is likely to please those to whom the term "scruffy nerf-herder" is immediately recognizable as an insult from "The Empire Strikes Back." Directed by Kyle Newman from a script by Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg, the movie is pretty funny as long as it focuses on geek-specific references ("Hey, it's Willow's spell book!") and situations, as when the friends take a side trip to Riverside, Iowa -- "future birthplace of Captain James Tiberius Kirk" -- just so Hutch can "bitch-slap some Trekkers." Less amusing are the bits that can be found in any teen road movie: hooker comedy, gross-out bathroom humor and homosexual-panic interludes.
"Fanboys" benefits from the official approval of George Lucas (copyrighted "Star Wars" sound effects and images occur throughout the film) and from some two years' worth of preview screenings and re-shoots. The delays have transformed the film into a minor-league all-star enterprise: Danny McBride, Will Forte and an almost unrecognizable Seth Rogen (in three roles, a la Peter Sellers) are among the comic actors who are better known now than when production began. Also showing up in cameos are such appropriate fandom icons as Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams.
"Fanboys" is playing exclusively at Malco's Studio on the Square.
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
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