By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 22 seconds ago

There’s nothing quite like returning to a guilty pleasure film; it’s the cinematic equivalent of raiding the fridge at 2:00 am and making a sandwich so unhealthy it would give Scooby and Shaggy diabetes. Sure, you could watch something more enriching, just like you could eat something other than meat covered with every sauce and topping that you own, but where’s the fun in that? Sometimes, the heart wants what the heart wants, even if that happens to be (let’s face it) pure cinematic junk food.

Recently, I returned to one of my ultimate guilty pleasure foods: Fanboys, the film about Star Wars nerds trying to see The Phantom Menace before its release. With a 33 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s fair to say that most people consider this film a serious stinker. But I’ve always enjoyed how the movie embraces the cringe of both its premise and its characters, effectively leaning into the goofiness that made us fall in love with Luke, Leia, and Han in the first place. Watching Fanboys now also reveals the biggest problem with the Disney era of Star Wars: the desperate need to make a dorky franchise seem cool.

Get Into The Garbage Chute, Fanboy!

Most of Fanboys is a tribute to the Original Trilogy, which makes sense: in this ‘90s set film, the prequels have yet to come out. Of course, Fanboys came out in 2009, four years after the Prequel Trilogy ended. The creators were very well aware of how much fans largely hated George Lucas’ follow-up film, so they ended Fanboys with a bit of cheeky meta-commentary. As our characters settle in to watch The Phantom Menace on the big screen, one of them broaches a once-unthinkable proposition right before the credits roll: “What if the movie sucks?”

That line hits differently now that Disney has released its own Sequel Trilogy of Star Wars movies. In the wake of those film failures, there has been plenty of critical reappraisal of the prequels. Some of this comes from younger audiences who grew up with those movies and have a nostalgic fondness for the foundational schlock of their childhood. But a surprising amount of the reappraisal comes from older fans who once mercilessly bashed movies like The Phantom Menace. Those fans have decided that, in retrospect, passionate Star Wars movies from an honest weirdo are better than dispassionate Star Wars movies made by a soulless company.

Force Choking The Critics

As one of those older fans, I kept thinking about this comparison when watching Fanboys. To be clear, this is a film that is filled with flaws: the humor is broad, and much of the raunchier stuff (added at Harvey Weinstein’s request, no less) is simply gross rather than engrossing. However, most of the bad jokes were written from the perspective of the titular fanboys, and they collectively manage to do something that I thought was impossible. Namely, the humor of the film captured what it was like to be a Star Wars fan in the ‘90s. 

The characters debate about whether Boba Fett was actually cool, get advice from Harry Knowles, strike out with women, and generally act like a gaggle of homeschooled kids whose only teacher was a VCR. Some of the jokes and even the performances are rough around the edges (seriously, Kristen Bell is acting circles around her colleagues), but that’s part of the charm: like the best of the worst bad B-movies, all of this came from creators who are deeply passionate and had something to say. In this way, they effectively channel the quirky excesses of George Lucas himself when he was making the soon-to-be-hated prequels. 

The Nostalgia Menace

In The Phantom Menace, does it really make sense for Qui-Gon Jinn to trust his life to an idiot with a speech impediment? Of course not, just like it doesn’t make sense for him to risk the fate of an entire planet on the child slave that he ends up buying and bringing back to the Jedi temple. The craziness continued with Attack of the Clones, which had Obi-Wan Kenobi solving huge galactic conspiracies by talking to the weirdo owner of his favorite diner. In Revenge of the Sith, meanwhile, Anakin murders a zillion children because he got an “IOU” on saving Padme from a boss who now has resting monster face.

All of these are bonkers creative decisions by George Lucas, but that’s part of what makes the prequels special. The man is always swinging for the fences, and even when the bat doesn’t connect, it’s fun to watch each swing. You can’t ever really predict where Lucas is going to go with this story, just like you can never predict what will happen next to the titular protagonists of Fanboys. There’s a certain magic to that, and watching this fannish comedy unfold has the same bizarrely captivating quality as listening to your craziest friend tell his most unhinged story.

E-Girl And Her Podracer Boyfriend

Compared to the prequels, Disney’s Star Wars sequels are depressingly flat. You can feel the corporate meddling at every step, from transforming The Force Awakens into a soft reboot to bringing Palpatine back for sheer nostalgia value. There is no actual creative vision behind these movies because the company doesn’t care about creativity: they just care about keeping fans happy enough to keep buying endless Funko slop. Lucas might have gotten rich by selling toys, but he didn’t worry all that much about pandering to fans; instead, he jammed his prequels with anything and everything he found interesting, giving us a trilogy truly unlike any other ever made.

While Fanboys pokes very gentle fun at the prequels, it has something important in common with those films: it’s filled with every crazy idea that the creators can jam into it. Major cameos from heavyweights like William Shatner and Carrie Fisher exist alongside scenes where our heroes learn life lessons from hookers. The film has poignant things to say about life and death, but it also has time to make our heroes strip down to impress a local gay bar (their own personal Mos Eisley). The whole thing is a surprisingly complex meditation on friendship, though this can be hard to notice when, say, Kristin Bell is dressed as slave Leia.

Much like the Star Wars prequels, Fanboys is very flawed and divisive, but it was made with honesty and passion from quirky creators who had a genuine vision. That alone gives the film more rewatchability than the Disney-era Sequel Trilogy. If you’d like to see just how funny fan humor can be, or maybe you want to relive the glory days of ‘90s Star Wars fandom, you’re in luck. Fanboys is currently streaming on Tubi, which should honestly consider making a new slogan based on everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away: “the free will be with you. Always.”