This week in local theaters
- Forced Comedy Fanboys tries a bit too hard.
FANBOYS Fanboys is meant for the dude who's content to simply stare at an Imperial storm trooper's empty helmet for 90 minutes. It's for the two childhood friends who parted ways back in junior high over a dispute about whether Captain James T. Kirk could kick Han Solo's ass. And it's for every girl who ever donned a Princess Leia Jabba-palace slave-girl costume, lest her boyfriend refuse her access to the Dianoga under his robe. So there's your target audience—Kevin Smith, in other words, who cameos as himself in a film loaded with more "what the...?" guests than an entire season of The Love Boat. For the rest of you, find something—anything—better to do. Directed by Kyle Newman and credited to at least four screenwriters, Fanboys is little more than Star Wars porn about four friends (Sam Huntington, Chris Marquette, Jay Baruchel, Dan Fogler) traveling cross-country in 1998 to sneak a peek at a rough cut of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace months before its release. The movie's one genuine bright spot is Kristen Bell as a fanboy's dream combination of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Janeane Garofalo. She nails it—half-nerd, half-hottie, and altogether tougher than any of the supposed heroes. The other cameos are more dispiriting. Seth Rogen appears in two equally humiliating roles, as a pug-nosed, gap-toothed, lisping Star Trek fan and as a pimp; Billy Dee Williams plays a judge named Reinhold; Carrie Fisher appears solely to repeat a line from Return of the Jedi; Smith and Jason Mewes make a pit stop in a gas station's men's room for oral sex; and William Shatner once more plays himself in what's become a forced march of self-parodies. You're better off watching The Star Wars Holiday Special on YouTube. At least Bea Arthur sings. —Robert Wilonsky (Opens Friday at The Belcourt)
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009) "That was the most offensive display of sexualized violence I have ever seen," one wilting fellow in need of a camphor hankie was overheard saying in the elevator. Such blanching is the reaction Last House on the Left is trolling for, but I doubt it will be typical. Permissibility has marched on since Wes Craven's Last House of 1972 and its infamous rape scene. Exploitation is now a niche DVD commodity, quaintly nostalgic, like stamp collecting. Last House, in which no transgression goes unpunished, seems practically a morality tale. A teen (Sara Paxton), on family vacation at the lake house, ditches mom and pop for a night out with a galpal. They fall in with a band of fugitive brigands, who, after pillaging their girl hostages, gussy up like a real family to gain shelter for the night in the nearest house—belonging to a certain couple whose daughter hasn't come home yet. Hilarity ensues. This Last House will, most likely, attract no especial outrage and have no subsequent obligation to justify its gunky, atavistic subject matter, untouched by the light of higher reason. It may qualify as progress that primordial slog only needs to be "about" the ambiguous squirm that comes from sitting out an excruciatingly staged despoilment, the queasy pleasure reflex that kicks in when watching retribution in action. —Nick Pinkerton (Opens Friday)
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