A “Fanboys” review by Roger Ebert becomes a discussion with Jawsphobia
EBERT: A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them.
JAWSPHOBIA: So how do you explain them disregarding their own hygiene ?
EBERT: Their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion.
JAWSPHOBIA: Like Jesus is irrelevant to the Christian?
EBERT: Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.
JAWSPHOBIA: That’s fair enough.
EBERT: Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other.
JAWSPHOBIA: Not exactly an ideal springboard to romance, if you recall the films. . .
EBERT: If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else.
JAWSPHOBIA: How do you explain the enterprising Star Wars fans and Trekkers who write some of the most respected shows today?
EBERT: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to.
JAWSPHOBIA: Asking the Answer Man or me? Who is “you”? How is Fanboys?
EBERT: Its primary flaw is that it's not critical. It is a celebration of an idiotic lifestyle.
JAWSPHOBIA: What lifestyle? Do actual fans end up in replica trash compactors, take pilgrimages to Skywalker Ranch to physically steal movies for friends dying of cancer each week? That lifestyle?
EBERT: If you want to get in a car and drive to California, fine. So do I. So did Jack Kerouac. But. . . . beam your ass down to Route 66.
JAWSPHOBIA: I see. The lifestyle of Jack Kerouac is our yardstick. Very stable.
EBERT: "Fanboys" follows in the footsteps of "Sex Drive."
JAWSPHOBIA: Missed that film. I was “on the road” you might say.
EBERT: This plot is given gravitas because one of the friends, Linus (Christopher Marquette), is dying of cancer.. . . it's one of those movie diseases that is mentioned occasionally so everyone can look solemn and then dropped when the ailing Linus dons a matching black camouflage outfit and scales the Skywalker Ranch walls with a grappling hook.
JAWSPHOBIA: Let me tread lightly here, sir. I know you’ve had close calls with cancer and this is real and serious for you. But someone else can make the movie about sitting around waiting to die. There is a time to live, a time to die, a time to scale walls.
EBERT: "Fanboys" is an amiable but disjointed movie that identifies too closely with its heroes. Poking a little more fun at them would have been a great idea.
JAWSPHOBIA: Just how great? Ever hear the term “easy target?” As it stands, the movie has William Shatner in it. Difficult to forget that the best slams have already been delivered. “You’re almost thirty – have you ever kissed a girl?” So it’s been done and well. I take this movie as being the tone of Detroit Rock City. We can take for granted that loving KISS music is an arbitrary obsession, but it is also about all journeys.
EBERT: They are tragically hurtling into a cultural dead end. . .
JAWSPHOBIA: Only in the most literal 1999 sense, aiming to see The Phantom Menace which is a film that seems to have earned only one “thumbs up” and it was your own lonely thumb. Up what, we don’t want to know.
EBERT: That are mastering knowledge which has no purpose other than being mastered, and too smart to be wasting their time.
JAWSPHOBIA: What knowledge is worthwhile? Movie Answer Man articles? Your DVD commentaries (which I actually like)? Or porn? You know – these people do still have to attend school and get jobs.
EBERT: When a movie's opening day finally comes, and fanboys leave their sidewalk tents for a mad dash into the theater, I wonder who retrieves their tents, sleeping bags…
JAWSPHOBIA: Well, I’ve looked it up Mr. Journalist. They stuff that under the theater seat and hold it on their laps and then they all sit around while one of them reads your advance review. And the ushers walk the aisle with air freshener.
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