So Fanboys was written by Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg. If you followed the old Wordpress version of The Review Basement then you know that I've talked about the work of these two people a lot over the last three years. For those of you who don't know, Ernest Cline is the author of Ready Player One and Armada and wrote the script for the movie adaptation of Ready Player One and Adam F. Goldberg is a Television writer and producer who created the family comedy The Goldbergs and it's spin-off Schooled, which are two of my favourite shows on TV. So to have a movie written by both of them is pretty great. Especially since in the seven years that The Goldbergs has been on, I've always been able to connect with at least one of Adam's characters. And Ernest Cline just writes really good novels and movies, so having the two of them write this movie is like the ultimate geek experience. At least for me it was.
The cast of this movie is spectacular. I mean this movie was my first time seeing Dan Fogler and Chris Marquette in anything, I've since seen Dan Fogler in episodes of The Goldbergs as Murray's brother, Marvin, and in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I haven't seen Chris Marquette in anything else, but according to IMDB he's in a Horror Comedy called Infestation with Brooke Nevin, who played Rachel on the TV adaptation of Animorphs. The rest of the cast is pretty great. You have Sam Huntington who played Ox in Not Another Teen Movie and Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns, Kristen Bell who played Veronica Mars and is the voice of Anna in Frozen and Frozen II, Jay Baruchel who was on Popular Mechanics for Kids, played Kirk in She's Out of My League and voiced Hiccup in the How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy, as well as cameos from Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, William Shatner, Danny Trejo and Danny McBride, among many others.
I think the characters I identify with the most in this movie are Linus (Marquette) and Windows (Baruchel). Both for different reasons. I identify with Windows because like him, my love life has been not great and I've also been oblivious when a girl has had a crush on me. I identify with Linus because he has a terminal illness and presumably had to go through treatment before discovering that it was terminal. And while I've never had a terminal illness, I know what it's like to have to go see doctors constantly and spend a lot of time in the hospital. Obviously I can identify with the other characters in that I'm a geek and a Star Wars fan like they are.
I think what I like best about Fanboys is that it's centred on doing something for a friend who doesn't have that much longer to live, in this case break into Skywalker Ranch and steal a copy of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace for them all to watch together before Linus dies. I think if that human element wasn't included in the movie, I don't think it would be as good of a movie. Same as if Eric's struggle to live up to his father's expectations wasn't in the movie either. Both of these issues are ones that we've all dealt with at one time or another or know someone who has. So that makes these characters a lot more relatable than they might otherwise have been if the movie's director, Kyle Newman, had failed in convincing the studio to let him keep the cancer storyline in the film.
My only problem with Fanboys is a problem that I have with anything that Adam F. Goldberg does. Adam doesn't like Star Trek and he tends to make fun of the franchise and Star Trek fans in his work. On The Goldbergs and Schooled he's managed to keep it to the 100th episode of The Goldbergs, "Jackie Likes Star Trek", but here he uses the main characters to attack Star Trek fans. He also portrays them as intolerant people, which isn't the case. I don't like this, not because I'm a fan of Star Trek myself, but it really isn't fair to attack fans of a TV show or movie just because you think that the movie or show that YOU like is better than the one they like. Which is the biggest problem with Fandom in general, not just with one particular person who happens to write and produce movies and TV shows. Nevertheless it's probably the least funny and the worst part of this movie.
In the review that I did on this movie on the old blog, I mentioned that I thought the Windows/Zoe relationship at the end of the movie came out of nowhere and felt shoehorned into the movie. However when I watched the movie this time around, I noticed that it was actually seeded at the beginning of the movie when Zoe (Bell), Hutch (Fogler) and Windows are at the comic book store that Windows owns, Windows is on his laptop, geeking out with his online girlfriend Rogue Leader, and Zoe proves to Hutch that Windows isn't paying attention to anything around him by flashing him her breasts, cleverly covered on screen by the height of the Toughbook (laptop) that Windows is using, and then verbally telling Windows that she's doing so. It only feels like it's shoehorned in because Zoe isn't in the whole movie. She's in the beginning and then doesn't show up again until later on in the movie.
I first saw Fanboys in 2013. A friend of mine at the time had the movie on DVD and I was over at her place one night and she asked me if I'd ever seen it before. I told her I hadn't, as I tended to avoid movies like that, so she lent it to me along with The Blues Brothers on DVD, which I also had never seen. I watched Fanboys that night, almost as soon as I got home from my friend's place, and I absolutely loved it. I eventually bought the digital copy from iTunes but I always wanted a physical copy of the movie. So then at some point last year, or maybe it was in 2018, I found the movie on Blu-ray for $5 at a geek sale.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I love Fanboys. It's definitely not for everyone though. If you're not a geek and aren't a fan of Star Wars you might not enjoy this movie as much. Then again, you might if you're a fan of Ernest Cline's work or Adam F. Goldberg's material. I'm giving Fanboys 9/10 stars because the Star Wars vs. Star Trek thing isn't funny and pretty unfair in my opinion, but the rest of the movie is solid and I would definitely recommend it.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489049/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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