So there’s this movie that made the Internet go crazy a few weeks or month ago called The Fanatic. It stars John Travolta as a super mega fan of an action hero movie star. The movie is produced by Redbox and was written and directed by Fred Durst (aka Limp Bizkit front man). Apparently it’s a So Bad It’s Good movie of the highest (or lowest) caliber. So I finally got around to watching it… and I think the Internet exaggerated its shock, outrage, or hysteria a bit (shocking, I know). This is better than advertised though still a pretty iffy movie.
So, yes, Fanatic stars Travolta as a character named Moose, a lumbering ox who is clearly somewhere on the Autism spectrum. He lumbers around in a costume on Hollywood Boulevard, mugging and making money off the tourists. He’s a superfan of a somewhat faded action/sci-fi star and just wants his autograph. But the action star (played by Devan Sawa) is kind of a jerk to him every time they run into each other. Soon things go bad because Moose doesn’t understand social boundaries.
The first thing to say about the flick is that Travolta is actually pretty good playing this Lenny-like oaf Moose. He’s doing a pretty good job of inhabiting a large man who tries to be small. It’s arguable, however, that the movie didn’t really need to make the superfan so clearly autistic. Non-autistic people can be obsessive weirdos over movie stars without adding in the mental issues. But that’s the choice they made and I think Travolta delivered… it’s not as much of a train-wreck as I’d heard. That said, to be fair, sometimes he drops out of character slightly and you can see or hear Travolta under the character, but that’s rare.
Where this movie goes wrong is that it does a LOT of wheel spinning. There’s a half dozen repetitive encounters between the superfan and the movie star that ultimately just go nowhere. You keep expecting one of them hitting a breaking point and the movie would finally get to whatever points its making. But, no, it isn’t until the final 20-25 minutes where you could argue anything “happens”. And it’s not like the first hour is a slow burn… it’s just repetitive.
Also there’s the problem – though maybe it’s a choice fair enough – that neither Travolta nor Sawa are good people. Travolta isn’t the hero because he’s obsessive and ultimately grows violent and dangerous (plus just not understanding social behavior). But Sawa’s movie star is an aggressive Type A jerk every time. In some respects, he’s protecting his child or his personal space but the whole movie could be resolved if he was just a nice person once. So that means you watch the whole movie not really rooting for either one of them.
And then there’s a real bullshit ending that I pretty much hated. I think there’s a glimmer there of some deeper meaning or intent but it’s covered in some pretty miserable violence and a very, very, deeply stupid conclusion for one of the character. And ending so aggressively stupid you can imagine a dozen ways it doesn’t make sense and how the characters could resolve it in no time. It just doesn’t make practical, logical sense.
So… yeah… this isn’t the worst thing afterall It’s filmed well visually, some of the editing can be very bad, but there is talent behind the camera (that talent, in part, being Fred Durst which kind of surprised me). I think the film has a structure problem and the ending is garbage which could have been resolved by a few more passes on the script. I don’t really recommend the flick but it does have some decent moments and some pretty good acting.
Score: 62