I find myself torn on Fanboys. I paid as little attention to the mountain of starts and stops it's gone through to this point to keep myself as fresh on it as possible once it did finally get to screening. I was aware of the infamous "no cancer" cut and I knew the guys behind it never seemed to really get all the "wins" they wanted to make the final product reflect what they wanted it to be back on the original draft of the script.
Fanboys is not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, and if I weren't personally attached to one of its fundamental themes myself at the moment, I think I'd be writing a different review. On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to people getting their vision out there, compromises and all. Most folks don't even end up with a final product after putting their hearts and souls into something. Others manage to make things like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People happen with what seems like no real hard-fought battle involved.
At the same time, I can't ignore the fact that I have a friend whose personal battle with cancer has taken a turn for the worse lately, and that really fundamentally changes how I see this film, the "no cancer" cut no longer what the final to-be-released (we assume) movie will be. After a day or so of reflection, that direct connection to the flick is what actually makes me a bit more critical of it at once.
The plot, for those unfamiliar, is about a group of childhood friends who have drifted apart in the years since high school coming back together to storm Skywalker Ranch to see The Phantom Menace before it's released since they've found one of their crew has 3-4 months to live. Thematically, it really holds close to the choices we make influencing how true we are to ourselves and what we believe.
When you have a friend who has an undefined next few months or years and you have a track record of loving something dearly like geeks love Star Wars, comics, and other things, the thought enters your mind of how unjust it'd be for them to miss out on that "event". That's how I feel about Watchmen, and would I drag him across the country to get it in front of his eyes if he wasn't undergoing extensive, invasive chemo? You bet your ass I would. The premise itself rings true to me.
Are there missteps? Yes, and if anything, the only one that I didn't forgive away was the actual presence of Linus' cancer in the movie. There are notable points when it becomes an issue, but there are others where it seems like he can go at the same speed as all the other guys. That inconsistency is what actually makes the cancer storyline only work in concentrated bits. That isn't to say it didn't get to me or that it was completely unbelievable, but it really did take me out of the movie a few times.
There's a cross fade from one character sleeping to another waking up late in the film that emotionally got me, and that moment makes everything work all over again. At first, upon finishing viewing the movie, I couldn't conceive of how you cut the cancer out of this movie. It isn't used as a gimmick, and it is probably true that the multitude of compromises the movie went through to get to this stage helped to water it down to its implementation as it stands.
Like I said, anything more acerbic critics would tear apart for me was entirely forgivable. Danny McBride showing up in the last 20 minutes of any movie is a good thing, too. All the cameos were enjoyable, and I wouldn't want to spoil them here.
Since it's ostensibly a movie about loving Star Wars (pre-prequels), there are a couple of things I want to leave you with. No matter what anyone tells you, if you love pre-prequel Star Wars, you'll enjoy this a lot more than the Clone Wars big screen TV pilot. Fanboys is something you may have to be a fanboy yourself to enjoy, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.