Here’s one to watch for on one of DISH’s many movie channels: Fanboys. It’s quite possibly cinema’s longest inside joke.
Yes, even more so than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which is of the same universe. Fanboys has been held up by script squabbles for over two years, but since it’s set in 1998… no matter. (A lesson here for all aspiring film makers: Whenever you create something “cutting edge,” at some point, it’s all going to look like Saturday Night Fever.)
The premise involves a group of friends breaking into Skywalker Ranch to catch a sneak peek at Episode One. It’s at this point (behold, the premise point!) that the screenplay becomes nostalgic for those of us in the actual fanboy and-girl community; there was a time, you see, when the jury was out on JarJar Binks.
At the safe distance of 2009, we’re aware of the big punchline awaiting this group—that while perhaps no film could match the anticipation which built for The Phantom Menace, it had two things going against it. It was, in many ways, a very bad movie. But even if it were a palatable film, it entered the world without the protective sheen of childhood awe which protect the original trilogy—a sort of laminate coating built of chipped action figures, daydreams, and attempted Jedi mind tricks.
You can get away with this when you’re seven. When you’re thirty-seven? Not so much. That’s what the prequels were up against; even if they were outstanding films, we were going to miss the stop-motion photography and the puppets nodding in the distance.
Although panned by critics not in on the joke, Fanboys is likely to become a cult classic. At my showing, just as I was reconciling the fact that I was able to answer the "are you really who you say you are" questions lobbied at the protagonists, the crowd in attendance recognized William Shatner before he copped to it, but a few murmurs went around the theater when Carrie Fisher popped up as a doctor. Other than that, the filmakers pretty much assume you know who you're looking at, whether it's Kevin Smith or Ray Park (better known as Darth Maul.)
It's a sweet movie that reminds us all of the delicious glory of waiting, and, for the right people, will feel like an evening spent with old friends.
