As a connoisseur of crappy cinema, I often seek out movies that I feel might hit that so-bad-it’s-good sweet spot. There are scads and scads of bad movies, but few manage to land in the realm where their utter inanity and ineptitude provide genuine, baffled entertainment. The Internet would have you believe that the new movie The Fanatic fits that bill. On its face it seems like it might. It’s directed and co-written by Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst, stars John Travolta, and is about a mentally challenged fan stalking and holding his idol hostage. That sounds like it has plenty of potential. The Fanatic is not a fun watch, especially by the last act, and I was mostly left scratching my head and wondering who in the world this movie was crafted for and why.
Moose (Travolta) is an obsessive fan. He also has a mental disability, which makes it hard for him to connect with other people. He’s obsessed with the actor Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa, fairly good here) and getting an autograph. After a misunderstanding, Moose is determined to track down his favorite actor and let him know why fans are important.
I have no idea who this movie was made for. I wasn’t so much laughing at it, though it did happen occasionally, as I was just staring slack-jawed and completely mystified. I didn’t really have fun watching something like this and I doubt most people would. It’s a bad movie but really, it’s a gigantically miscalculated movie because what is the point and perspective presented? Are we meant to be weirded out by our mentally challenged protagonist, because that seems in bad taste? Are we meant to endorse his actions, because that seems in bad taste too considering how many transgressions he makes? Are we meant to feel that he is justified in his alienation or in how he responds to Hunter Dunbar, because that seems like enabling criminal behavior? Are we meant to feel for Hunter Dunbar when he gets the upper hand and tortures Moose in vengeance, because I can tell you listening to Travolta wail on the floor in pained cries is not exactly a hoot. Am I meant to have a squeamish sympathy for Moose that is then tested over time as he crosses more and more lines? That doesn’t really happen either. I don’t know what the movie wants me to think about Moose and Travolta’s committed yet stereotypical performance, which I think is why so many are holding this up as an example of something to ridicule because they don’t know what to make of it. It’s like the film just took a lot of bizarre and controversial plot elements, threw them together, and said, “You decide” when it comes to commentary.
What is the message about fanaticism? It’s the title of the movie so I would assume it’s being presented at least as a subject worthy of discussion. Moose is a fanatic and his fandom drives his life. It’s all he can think about. It gives his life purpose. Yet the movie takes away any real negative interpretation by applying the mental disability to the character. He’s a fanatic but he can’t be all that bad because he’s mentally disabled and, maybe according to the movie, not fully in control or cognizant of his own actions. This is a cop-out on multiple fronts. The completely superfluous voice over narration from Leah (Ana Golja), a side character at best, is generally just describing what is literally happening as well as offering an occasional dismissive comment about the facile nature of reality in Hollywood. Hey, have you heard how the entertainment industry is shallow and surface-level and exploits dreams and dreamers for profit? This is new to me! The narration almost presents a weak justification for Moose, like he was entitled to strike back when he discovered that actors don’t like it when you track down their home addresses and harass them. “You’re nothing without your fans,” Moose screams at Hunter in anger, and in an ordinary movie I would consider this a sign that the movie is lambasting the self-aggrandized sense of entitlement from fans and how toxic this can be to the psyche. Except The Fanatic won’t do any of that. It won’t set up Moose as an example of toxic fandom, and his disability is proof enough why.
I did not enjoy this movie. For thirty minutes I’m watching Travolta go from scene to scene and try out every clichéd acting trope for playing somebody with mental retardation. I may have missed something, and I don’t have the interest to watch it again, but I was left wondering how in the world Moose even supports himself. He has friends across Hollywood plugged into different tourist ventures, but we only ever see him dressing as a British policeman and running around the Boulevard trying to coax strangers into snapping pictures with him. He’s terrible and off-putting to the average person on the street, so he can’t be making money from this. It seems like the filmmakers are weeding out any and all things that could keep Moose away from this very select path of being an obsessive stalker. That’s all he does. He’s not focused on anything else other than finding this star and letting him know how much he loves his work. There’s so little to this character but because the film strips any other complications or attachments from his life, it feels downright manipulative to basically set him up for this collision course. I’m reminded of 2002’s One Hour Photo where Robin Williams played a disturbed man who formed an inappropriate attachment to a group of strangers and became more and more undone, finally stalking them, intervening with horrific results, and hinting at a deeper history of abuse. None of that is present with Moose and it makes the experience feel like it’s either pandering or dithering.
When Moose does kidnap Hunter in the last act it’s meant to evoke a Misery situation, but it felt to me like a much sloppier version of 2006’s Hard Candy. In that film, it was a battle of wills between an angry young girl (Ellen Page) seeking righteous vengeance and a man swearing his innocence (Patrick Wilson), and your sympathies were meant to be tested and question who was correct and who was going too far. I think that’s what Durst and company were going for but oh do they miss the mark and then some. I didn’t feel like Hunter was getting comeuppance for his behavior because his responses to Moose seemed fairly reasonable. I didn’t feel like Moose had become the villain now because the movie was presenting him still as the same figure from the opening minutes; he hadn’t become more disturbed or aggressive even after doing some very bad, very criminal things. I didn’t feel like the film was setting up some form of tragedy where Moose and his ignorance of the severity of his actions would escalate beyond his control. Mostly I was just waiting for the movie to be over, again watching with the fascination of a rubbernecker. I didn’t feel tension during any moment of this movie, and I didn’t really care what happened to anyone.
I don’t know what would exactly appeal to Travolta with this part, besides the actorly possibilities of playing someone with mental disabilities. God bless him, Travolta goes all-in on this part and is practically bouncing off the walls. He’s so unrestrained, so dug into the tics and mannerisms of his character, which feel more informed by the portrayals of other famous actors playing this kind of person than it does on anything else. It is a performance that makes you second guess many of the actor’s choices, including the … shaved mullet haircut, and there are certain line readings that are so awkward they will make you leave the room in embarrassment. Of note is one frantic threat about what Moose will do to a man in a way reminiscent of Freddy Kruger, and the level of detail said in such a serious, scream-heavy tone just adds more ammunition for its unintentional hilarity. The problem is that the movie certainly doesn’t see Moose as a tragic figure, until his brutal beating at the end, and it doesn’t see him as a comic figure, so he’s just kind of hanging around like an unwanted guest. Travolta’s wince-inducing go-for-broke, almost Nicolas Cage-ian performance (I’m making this a term) is the best reason to watch The Fanatic, and you should really not watch this movie at all.
Another reason the movie isn’t derisively enjoyable is because it’s fairly competent and actually a bit stylish in several areas. Durst will get a lot of mockery for his involvement but the man has always had an eye for visuals (he directed most of his band’s music videos). There are some pretty nicely composed shots with some moody lighting thanks to cinematographer Conrad W. Hall (Panic Room). The score is pretty good too, using a lot of Max Richter-esque strings for pointed punctuation of key moments of unease and dread. This isn’t a bad movie because of the technical merits or through Durst’s direction. Sure, you could argue he should have reined in Travolta’s eagerness, but when the movie seems made to indulge those impulses, I can’t fault him for basically just letting his lead actor throw subtlety out the window and dance on its grave and other mixed metaphors.
It’s for these reasons that I found The Fanatic to just be a dispiriting movie, missing the electric charge of the truly and entertainingly bad movies like The Room or the oeuvre of Neil Breen. It’s just a bad movie by design, not on purpose. It’s hard to even find sincerity with it, an essential element of so-bad-it’s-good cinema, because I don’t really know what the movie finds sincere. It’s inconclusive what message I’m supposed to garner, what perspective is being delivered, and how I’m supposed to feel about any of this. It’s not executed in an intriguing ambiguity that pushes the audience to draw their own interpretations and conclusions. It feels more like the movie is simply incomplete, that it’s missing core elements to make it worth watching. Travolta unleashes a flurry of unrestrained acting tics and some may find it snicker-worthy, but Travolta hasn’t exactly been holding back as of late in his film choices. The Fanatic is really a dank genre thriller that doesn’t know what it wants to say and what it wants to do, and by slapping the mental disability factor into the mix, it definitely has no courage to pick a direction or statement. If you’re morbidly curious, you might find some degree of interest here, but I wouldn’t advise it. The Fanatic is not the next best bad movie. It’s just a miscalculated effort and a sad one.
Nate’s Grade: C-
This review originally ran on Nate’s own review site Nathanzoebl. Check it out for hundreds of excellent reviews!