Review: The Fanatic

John Travolta stars as socially awkward film fanatic Moose, who is especially obsessed with action star Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa). Unfortunately for Moose, Hunter is a grade-A jerk whose life is a mess, and who has little to no patience for his fans…especially those on the more obsessed side as Moose is. Unfortunately for Hunter, Moose doesn’t take rejection well. At all. And he knows where you live, Mr. Dunbar. Ana Golja plays Moose’s one semi-friend, a paparazzo.

 

If not the worst film John Travolta has ever made, this insulting 2020 thriller may at least be his most shameful in a career that already has “Look Who’s Talking Too” and “Battlefield Earth”. I probably shouldn’t have expected maturity and insight from director Fred Durst, the man who once released an album with a title that referenced brown toilet water, but this movie is depressingly awful with or without knowing about Limp Bizkit (who of course are on the soundtrack at one point).

 

A dreadful blend of “Misery”, “The Fan”, and “Paparazzi”, you really know you’re in trouble the moment you realise that the film’s budget could only stretch so far as to get Devon Sawa of all people, to play the film’s Statham-esque action movie star. The basic premise itself, whilst hackneyed isn’t a useless one but Durst and debut co-writer David Bekerman merely use it as an excuse to offer up an insulting and one-dimensional portrait of fans as basically obsessed losers somewhere on the Autism spectrum. I’m sorry, but it’s impossible to watch Travolta’s gimmicky “I Am Sam” goes Travis Bickle (with a little Rupert Pupkin) performance here and not get the impression that they’re making a veiled and derogatory portrayal of someone with an unnamed (due to cowardice from the filmmakers) developmental issue. It’s a big frigging problem, and co-producer/star Travolta (whose late son Jett was autistic!) should be truly ashamed of himself here, especially considering he openly admitted in interviews that Moose is meant to be on the spectrum. Why would Travolta want to portray such a thing in such a way? Away from the ickiness of it, it’s easily the worst performance Travolta’s even given, yes worse than his turn in the aforementioned “Battlefield Earth”, which was truly terrible. Here he’s worse. Let it sink in.

 

If Travolta has any regrets or shame, I doubt Durst feels any here, this is the kind of film where even-handedness is having the paparazzi girl (played rather well by “Degrassi” graduate Ana Golja, who will hopefully survive this) be the voice of reason. Yeah, this film doesn’t operate on any level of reality or ‘go along with it for 90 minutes’ pseudo-reality whatsoever. Devon Sawa isn’t terrible as the action star being stalked, but his character is very poorly written (How about calling the cops at some point?). Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing him and Golja in literally anything else.

 

Insulting, infantile ‘fill-in-the-blank from hell’ movie with a terrible performance by Travolta, who should know better. If this was meant to be funny or a joke, it’s not remotely amusing. The worst film of 2020, it’s almost unwatchable. “One Hour Photo” this is not.

 

Rating: D-