The Fanatic (2019)

Originally Reviewed on August 8, 2020

I’ll be honest, the only reason why I chose to watch this is because I had seen some videos on YouTube talking about how bad this film is. Benedict Cumberbatch said in 1917 “Hope is a dangerous thing”. I disagree, curiosity is a dangerous thing because it leads to decisions like watching The Fanatic. This film sees John Travolta playing an obsessed fan who has some sort of learning difficulty and his friend is a paparazzi photographer. His behaviour to Hunter Dunbar becomes more erratic.

Is “I cant talk long, I gotta poop” the greatest opening line in movie history? Greatest in the bad sense of the worse maybe but as opening lines go it’s a memorable way to start a film. 

The film tries to make Hunter Dunbar seem like the baddie because its his behaviour that causes Moose to be more erratic but the problem that the film has is that it fails at doing this simple task. After everything that Moose does, its almost impossible to feel anything but sympathy for Dunbar. Even after finding out he has been cheating on his wife which a normal film would make him a scumbag, you think that doesn’t warrant what he goes through. This is a failure of Fred Durst’s part because he knows how to point a camera and make a film go from A to B but in terms of characters and motivation and stuff like that he fails miserably. 

What exactly drove John Travolta to this part? What made them have Moose be mentally challenged? Why does this film exist? The answer to all three of those questions and many more remains the same, I don’t know. I cant make my mind up whether Travolta is trying to play the role for a laugh or whether it’s a serious tale about fan obsession. There are some scenes which seem to be Travolta having a good time with the role and then there are more serious scenes. I thought the moment where Dunbar is playing Limp Bizkit and saying he was a fan back in the day was a cheeky nod which in a decent film would have been funny but here its just cringe worthy. 

The best thing about this film and that is a loose term is Leah. I thought that Ana Golja was actually quite decent. It’s not her fault that she is given such lousy dialogue but the character does gets some browny points because she tries to be a friend to Moose. The animation that pops up throughout the film is quite good and those are the two good things about this film because apart from that there is pretty much nothing good about this film.

There a good story here but its gets lost in a series of bad decisions and even worse dialogue, you end up feeling sorry for the wrong characters and despite being only a 90 minutes film, it felt like twice the length. It’s not the worst film of the year because despite the poor quality of the film it was worth watching it just to see John Travolta reach the low point of his career. The Fanatic has to be seen to be believed because if it’s a race to the bottom between John Travolta and Nicholas Cage then Travolta has a head start.