On the Big Board |
Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
64/82 |
Kelly Metz |
A few laugh-out-loud moments doesn't make up for the boring rest of it. Carrie Fisher's cameo was definitely the highlight. |
If you have learned nothing else from BOP over the past six years, you know how our staff feels about Star Wars geeks. There might be a lower form of life on the planet, but we don’t know what that would be. Even the platypus displays more pride and grace than the average Star Wars geek. Here is a group of people who are clinging to childhood memories of a movie franchise that never was as good as they wanted it to be. Then, their adult dreams were crushed by a series of prequels politely described as forgettable and more honestly evaluated as pointless.
Given this knowledge, we don’t quite know what to think of Fanboys. Will this MGM/Weinstein Company release eviscerate those deserving of mockery or will it celebrate their senseless passion for mediocre sci-fi movie-making? This could go either way. What we do know is that Fanboys sounds like a darling premise. Four Star Wars obsessives take on a quest to fulfill their dying friend’s deepest fantasy. He wants to see the soon-to-be-released Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace before the grim reaper pays a visit. But he doesn’t want to watch the movie at just any old theater. No, this victim of fate insists on seeing it at the one place on Earth that was specifically built to play Star Wars movies. Yes, that would be George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Seeking to accomplish this, a group of friends head out from their midwestern locale and they make a road trip to the place where they believe Lucas’ Ranch to be.
Fanboys offers a charming cast of people you might not know by name, but BOP likes a lot of them. Kristen Bell, TV’s Veronica Mars, works on the least appreciated show on television and we adore her for it. Jay Baruchel previously laid claim to this title when he portrayed the lead character on the show Fox couldn’t wait to cancel, Undeclared. Sam Huntington was Jimmy Olsen in the failed Superman Returns franchise re-boot. And Chris Marquette stole the show as the wisecracking buddy in The Girl Next Door.
The very definition of future cult classic, Fanboys offers an opportunity to mock as well as celebrate a culture at the same time. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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