Moriarty Keeps Pace With RUN FATBOY RUN, Trades Punches With DRILLBIT TAYLOR And Confesses His Real Feelings On FANBOYS!

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here. And, no, I don’t mean I’m going to piledrive fanboy culture Peter North-style a la Faraci. I just mean that I waited out the FANBOYS controversy until Weinstein figured out what he was going to do with it, and now that the dual-video release is being planned, I feel comfortable weighing in critically. These three films all represent various prisms through which filmmakers are portraying that oldest of stereotypes: the nerd. Sure, we’ve bent new words to describing ourselves, like geek or fanboy or gamer, but these are simply new splinter incarnations of the nerd. It’s no secret that Hollywood caters shamelessly to this demographic these days, but how do filmmakers really feel about them? One of the reasons the original REVENGE OF THE NERDS remains so much better than any other entry in that series is because of the genuine affection and respect that the film had for its characters. The best film nerds are the ones who are both gloriously nerdy and yet somehow completely comfortable with it. How do these three films stack up in the long and storied tradition of nerd cinema?



I actually saw this last year, and was about to review it when the American distributor suddenly sent out word that it was getting bumped to spring ’08. Well, here it is, and it’s still a decent, good-natured story about a guy having to learn to take a little fucking responsibility for himself. As a result, I expect 2/3 of our readership will reject it completely, clamping their hands over their ears as they run from the theater yelling “I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOU!” That may not be a precise figure, but you get the idea. Simon Pegg will probably guarantee a fairly sizeable fanboy/geek/nerd turnout, and there’s a reason he’s attracted such a fervent following over the last decade of work. There’s an approachability about him, a normalcy. He seems like a guy who’s got his head on straight, even when he’s a fuck-up like he is as Dennis, the lead in RUN FATBOY RUN. Pegg co-wrote the script with Michael Ian Black, and it’s pretty conventional British romantic comedy fare (which, admittedly, is a cut above conventional American romantic comedy fare), executed well, but not terribly surprising. Years ago, he literally ran out of his own wedding, leaving Libby (Thandie Newton) pregnant and alone. Now, five years later, Dennis finds himself constantly trying to insinuate himself in Libby’s life, and trying to be a real dad to Jake (the ridiculously cute Matthew Fenton). Libby’s involved with the mandatory New Asshole Boyfriend, played here by Hank Azaria. Even his name makes you want to punch him in the face. “Whit.” He’s “perfect,” which means of course that he is a giant piece of shit, and for some reason, Libby doesn’t see it. Dennis decides to prove to Libby that he can do anything Whit can, and he pledges to run a marathon in London. The rest of the film is just the build-up to the event and what it does to his relationships. The best stuff in the film, in my opinion, is between Pegg and Dylan Moran, and I could watch pretty much any situation with these two just riffing off of each other. David FRIENDS Schwimmer (that’s his legal name on his driver’s license... true story) makes his feature debut as a director, and his work is fine. I’m not rabid to see his next movie, but I certainly wouldn’t be adverse to it. RUN FATBOY RUN is decent entertainment. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know what you’re getting. Just don’t expect much extra.



If you go see DRILLBIT TAYLOR, you might notice that Edmond Dantes is given a co-story credit. Edmond Dantes, you may or may not know, is John Hughes, ‘80s teen comedy demigod, and DRILLBIT TAYLOR was one of many treatments he wrote during his overall production deal with Paramount. Hughes was a machine when he was working at his peak. He came from the world of advertising before he was a filmmaker, and his time writing short fiction for NATIONAL LAMPOON really served him well when cranking out treatments and scripts for a production deal. I love that there are Hughes treatments that are still floating around out there, like little John Hughes seeds that haven’t been planted yet. In this particular case, Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown worked together to turn this Hughes idea into... something that pretty closely resembles second-tier John Hughes movies from back in the day. And that is no insult, my friends. Not where I come from. I don’t think DRILLBIT works completely. But I don’t think a lot of John Hughes films are perfect, either. That doesn’t mean they are without charm or laughs. DRILLBIT gets a lot of goodwill from me because they found the right kids. They’re not movie slick. They’re real, and they’ve got a good sense of rapport. I’m mentioning this because it’s going to be real important in the next review as well. Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, and the strange and tiny David Dorfman all work really well as friends. Steven Brill has taken his fair share of critical shit for films like WITHOUT A PADDLE, LITTLE NICKY, or MR DEEDS, but I think he’s got a knack with young actors. His first film, HEAVY WEIGHTS, had a lot of really good kid performances in it, and he does nice work with that lead trio in particular here. The biggest problem with Owen Wilson films is the same problem that Jim Carrey films have these days: they’re just too goddamn underwritten. You can’t just rely on Owen Wilson’s Owen Wilson-ness to carry the day every time. He can’t make mediocre material great simply by being Owen Wilson. His very best performances, in films like THE DARJEELING LIMITED (it keeps growing on me the more I watch it) or THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS or... well... BOTTLE ROCKET... are because the material is there. The script is there. He has something to work with. Something to play. He can be lightning in a bottle doing comedy (THE WEDDING CRASHERS, ZOOLANDER) or he can be slow painful death (YOU, ME & DUPREE, SHANGHAI anything), but if you want greatness from him consistently, it starts with the script. DRILLBIT sets him up as this great character who’s going to blow through this high school... and instead, he’s just sort of an amiable fuck-up until the mechanical third-act complications and the inevitable redemption. I wish the film had been as crazy as it feels like it wants to be, and less of a rigid formula exercise. In some ways, I blame the source material, bringing it all back to Hughes. The film’s best moments, and there are a few, feel like a real Hughes film, not just a hollow homage. I just wish Rogen and Brown had felt free to subvert and bend the formula a little more and given the film its own identity, one that gave Owen and the uniformly good-but-underutilized adult cast (Leslie Mann, Danny McBride, Cedric Yarbrough, Ian Roberts, and the great Stephen Root deserve special mention) a little more to do.



Okay. FANBOYS. I assume if you’re interested at all in the film, you read Quint’s piece this morning. And I’m sure you’ve read many pieces about the film over the years here on the site. FANBOYS has been highly-anticipated by Harry and many, many others, and I sincerely hope that they enjoy it when they finally see the finished film. During this entire process... for as long as the film’s been discussed here on the site... I never read any drafts of it or saw any rough cuts of it. I was aware of it, but when I finally sat down this year and saw three different cuts of the film in three successive days, I got a pretty good idea of what I think the reasons are behind all of the “tampering” from the studio. FANBOYS isn’t very good. I wish it was. And I think in theory, FANBOYS might be decent. It’s just that in execution, it misses the mark, and for me, it starts with the very first scene. From the moment that Eric (Sam Huntington), Linus (Chris Marquette), Hutch (Dan Fogler), and Windows (Jay Baruchel) are put together, I don’t buy them as friends. Remember what I said about DRILLBIT? I’ll forgive that film some of its weaknesses because of the chemistry of its cast. Here, it’s the opposite. This innocuous little comedy ends up becoming fairly painful because of the lack of chemistry between the leads. Huntington and Marquette are the defining relationship of the film. Their broken friendship and the gradual rebuilding of it forms the main dramatic arc of the film, and it never seems to me at any point like Huntington and Marquette are even interested in being in the same room with one another. It’s not even just bad chemistry; it’s almost like they’re magnets with opposite charges, repelling each other. And regarding the much-debated “cancer or no cancer” debate... it ultimately doesn’t matter, and that’s a pretty damning statement about the movie. Again... we’re talking about execution and not intent here. In theory, a film about a group of friends trying to give a dying buddy his last wish could be very sweet and moving and funny and all sorts of other things. Could be. But the cancer here is mentioned a few times, but it barely seems to affect Linus. Marquette may be the main problem for me overall, since it’s his lack of chemistry with Huntington and his seemingly consequence-free cancer that bother me. The fact that it was so simple to delete it from the film and still have the film play pretty much exactly the same should say everything that needs to be said about it. Fans keep trumpeting the fact that “there are only two points between the scores on the two versions when they test them,” but what does that tell you? With or without cancer, it’s the same film. I actually think it plays more coherently the other way. In that version, Worthington gave up being a comic book artist to become a car salesman, and he ended up screwing Marquette over in the process since he was supposed to write the comics that Worthington would draw. The road trip isn’t about someone dying... it’s about someone’s love of fandom dying, and his friends reminding him of why that fandom is important. When people who haven’t seen both cuts complain that the new version “disrespects fans,” it seems to me that they’re wrong. I think the non-cancer version makes more sense out of Marquette being pissed off at Worthington, and it also makes it all just comedy instead of whipsawing between broad comedy and maudlin sentiment. I didn’t love any version of the film I saw, but if I had to pick, I would actually vote against the cancer. Thankfully, you won’t have to pick. Both versions will be available on video. And if they don’t go theatrical at all, it’s not the end of the world. At least people will be able to finally see the thing. There are good things in the film, no doubt. Kristen Bell makes the most of an undercooked role, but the reshoots actually helped put her in more of it, which turns out to be a good idea. She doesn’t save the film, but she certainly doesn’t hurt it. Seth Rogen evidently plays 375 different roles in the film, including “Star Trek Dork,” “Klingon,” “Crazy Scary Guy,” and “Billy Dee Williams.” If you’re the sort of STAR WARS fan where all it takes is a cameo by a familiar face to make you happy, then you will no doubt love this film. Ray Park, Carrie Fisher, and “Billy Dee Williams” all appear, but I honestly didn’t think any of the appearances were particularly funny or worthwhile. It’s more like a checklist. “Okay... yeah, that was someone from a STAR WARS film. Got it.” Like most of the STAR WARS references throughout the film, the jokes all feel a little threadbare. I think this film is simply too late to work, in addition to all of it’s bigger execution issues. Kyle Newman’s the credited director on the film, and Steven (DRILLBIT TAYLOR) Brill handled the majority of the reshoots and the reshaping of the film, and the result is exactly what you think it is... a sort of a Frankenstein thing made up of some good pieces and some bad pieces. I was at a press event with Frosty from Collider.com, and he and I have known each other for about 10 years now. One of the most important things we bonded over was STAR WARS. When the subject of this film came up, it was obvious that Frosty is far more fond of it than I am, and I explained to him all the things that I think are wrong with it. “Yeah, but I just love STAR WARS,” he said. “You have to understand... I was a huuuuuuuge fan back in the day.” I have a feeling that’s going to be the thing that most people who enjoy this film will say. It will remind them of something personal, and that personal memory will be what they attribute their love of the film to. And that’s fine. If it works for you on that level, then fine. But I was a huge STAR WARS fan my whole life, and that didn’t make this film any better in my opinion. You’ll see for yourself once The Weinstein Company sets a release date for both versions on DVD. I’ll be back a little later today with my ONE THING I LOVE for Tuesday. Until then...

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles