Well, ain’t this a nice pick for April, otherwise known as
Autism Acceptance Month? A film about an obsessed superfan that pretty much
everyone who has seen and written about it has pinned down as being on the
autism spectrum. And yeah, this technically came out last year, but it only
made it over here fairly recently and, after the utter trainwreck of Gotti,
I’ll admit that I’m aiming at low-hanging fruit with Travolta’s latest. I also
definitely get the problems with Travolta passing like this, but quite frankly,
that’s not even close to the worst of it.
Regardless of anything else, there is definitely one thing I
can say about this: John Travolta as the titular Fanatic is clearly trying to
make the material work. He’s trying way too hard, going full Nicolas
Cage in just how over-the-top he is here, but I at least get the feeling that
he’s trying to empathise with the caricature he’s been given. I mean, even I sympathise with him at points, both in the fanboy tendencies and in his general mistreatment by others.
However, being able to truly get into his head is a
difficult ask because… well, there’s no other way of putting it: This is the
single cringiest film I have ever covered on this blog. There is nothing else I
have encountered that comes anywhere close to just how painful it is to sit
through this film end-to-end. Between Travolta’s performance, both on his own
and when he’s pretending to be a British policeman (no, it doesn’t make any
more sense in context), and the dialogue he’s been saddled with, any sympathy I
have for the character is overridden by an intense need to never hear him talk
again.
And speaking of people we don’t really need to hear from
again, let’s get into the writer/director of this thing: Fred Durst. Yes, that
Fred Durst. He’s clearly trying to make a story about Hollywood and fan
toxicity, things that feel especially relevant in a Fandom Menace/DC vs. MCU
landscape. But much like with Gotti, this film fails to make it work because of
a depressing lack of honesty in what it’s presenting. Neither side, both of the
fan and of the action star Hunter Dunbar, comes out worth vibing with, albeit
for different reasons.
Travolta’s Moose is so much a caricature of what people
presume pop culture fans to be like, he makes Sheldon Cooper look like Clarence Worley, and Devon Sawa as Hunter is likewise a caricature of the most
egotistical kind of actor you can imagine. And in the gap between them, nothing
gets said that hasn’t been said multiple times before, and with significantly
less dogshit dialogue than is found here. Seriously, the voice-over narration
is so clichéd, expect to predict every line beforehand if you’re masochistic
enough to watch this for yourself.
Part of me wants to get on a high horse concerning what are
pretty evident attempts at passing autism in Moose’s mannerisms here. I mean,
between the physical stimming of him rocking in his seat at points, along with
his literal first line of dialogue including the words “I gotta poo”, I should
probably be a lot angrier at that than I ultimately am. But honestly, more so
than that, it’s Fred Durst that pisses me off the most about this.
The whole production feels like a grown-ass temper tantrum
about how ‘crazed’ his own fans were back when he still had any, showing off
its own brand of entitlement in the process. There’s even a scene where Hunter
flat-out talks about how “hot” Limp Bizkit’s music is, letting Durst stroke
himself off while we pay for the privilege. It’s a bit like if Disney bragged
about how good their Power Rangers series were: I technically agree with the
sentiment, but I also acknowledge that their work succeeded in spite of
their involvement, not because of it.
So… yeah, this is utter garbage, and verging dangerously
close to Gotti as far as how much I object to it on principle. It’s so
amazingly misguided that it somehow completely misses being so-bad-it’s-good,
even with how histrionic pretty much everything here is, and just stays
firmly in the realms of practically unwatchable. We can officially add this to
the list of reasons why Fred Durst is a true bottom-of-the-barrel creative,
right alongside the wave of shite music he helped spearhead in the 2000s.
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