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Fanboys

"We storm the ranch, or we die trying!" Who doesn't want to like a jokey road movie about a band of Star Wars nerds breaking into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch to steal a print of Episode I? Set in the fall of 1998 - six months before the release of the fabled Phantom Menace (seems like ancient history) - Kyle Newman's slapdash feature boasts cameos from Star Wars alums Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams, along with Danny McBride, Seth Rogen (in dual roles as a Star Trek geek and a Las Vegas pimp) and William Shatner.

    by Steven Rea | Columnist, Inquirer
    Published 

"We storm the ranch, or we die trying!"

Who doesn't want to like a jokey road movie about a band of Star Wars nerds breaking into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch to steal a print of Episode I? Set in the fall of 1998 - six months before the release of the fabled Phantom Menace (seems like ancient history) - Kyle Newman's slapdash feature boasts cameos from Star Wars alums Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams, along with Danny McBride, Seth Rogen (in dual roles as a Star Trek geek and a Las Vegas pimp) and William Shatner.

Still, for its amusing premise, Fanboys is scarily flat. Starting out in Ohio, where Eric (Sam Huntington) is stuck selling cars, Hutch (Dan Fogler) lives with his mom, Windows (Jay Baruchel) corresponds with an online sweetheart (he thinks), Zoe (Kristen Bell) is the girl no one takes seriously and Linus (Christopher Marquette) has terminal cancer (yup, not funny), the quintet climb in a van, pop in the Rush cassettes and head west.

All types of misadventure ensue, from a peyote session with an Indian to an encounter with a couple of working girls, leading ultimately to the break-in at Skywalker. But even with jokes about Jedi mind tricks and a heated debate over the relationship between Luke and Leia (did they or didn't they?), the laughs are few and far between.

- Steven Rea