If you are not a Star Wars fan, or at the very least you are not somewhat familiarised with its lore, you can definitely skip this movie. Except for some funny references to the popular saga and its creator George Lucas, this road movie à la The Blues Brothers (1980) does not really deliver as a comedy.

Eric (Sam Huntington) has grown out of Star Wars, or has he? It is Halloween 1998 and Eric goes to a party after a day of work. In there he will meet his old friends from high school: Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel) and Linus (Chriistopher Marquette). They appear dressed as stormtroopers and Darth Vader, something that Eric, who during high school would nerd out with them about Star Wars, finds now childish. Eric will try to keep the distance with his reencountered friends, but everything will change when he is told that Linus is terminally ill, and his last wish is to watch Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) before passing away.

The structure of the film is pretty much a rip-off of The Blues Brothers. Both are road movies in which misfit characters go on an adventure to accomplish some extravagant feat. In The Blues Brothers is regrouping their band and make some money to save the orphanage where they were raised, while in here we have the regrouping of high school friends that will try to steal a copy of The Phantom Menace from Skywalker Ranch. We also have a characteristic means of transport: a Star Wars themed van, instead of the iconic Bluesmobile. We will have various cameos along the way: in The Blues Brothers it was legendary jazz and soul musicians (such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, or Cab Calloway) while in Fanboys it will be people from the world of Star Wars (like Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, who curiously enough also appears in The Blues Brothers, and Ray Park) and we even have a surprise from their biggest rivals Star Trek.

That said, those small cameos happen to be one of the best and funniest things in the movie, as they allow for some amusing interactions with our geeky protagonists filled with references to the Star Wars films. Overall, the references to Star Wars and the entire work of Geroge Lucas can be perceived as practically the main and sole highlight, having its peak in the near end set piece occurring in Skywalker Ranch. Apart from that, the only other element that happens to be entertaining is the multiple wacky characters played by a sometimes hardly identifiable Seth Rogen.

Besides that, the film is rather forgettable. Most of the gags and dialogue (with the exception of the already mentioned Star Wars-based ones) feel repetitive and weak, with even one that practically seems copy-pasted from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985). The geek fandom culture feels quite superfluous even if it is pushed very strongly on a visual level. And finally, the dramatic element gets extremely underplayed which damages the more intended emotional sequences close to the end of the film. This part of the plot should have been tackled more deeply because, at the end of the day, the reason why this group of friends got back together for this “last” adventure is a quite a traumatic one.
Therefore, is this film worth your time? Look, if you have watched and specially if you like Star Wars it might be, if not avoid it. In any case, for those of you who like Star Wars do not expect to have an amazing time as the picture is in itself quite dull but at the very least you will get some of the jokes, enjoy the cameos and feel like you have just spend a couple of hours of your time watching (rather numbly) something that you would not be able to categorise as neither despicable nor hilarious but “Meh… Ok… Thank you for the movie, now onto the next thing.”